Dog Anthropologists

I love stuff like this. Alexandra Horowitz's book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know looks to examine why dogs act the way that they do.
Horowitz describes dogs as "anthropologists among us," because she realized, as she observed people and their dogs,

that she was watching "a complex dance requiring mutual cooperation, split-second communications and ­assessments of each other's abilities and desires. The slightest turn of a head or the point of a nose now seemed directed, meaningful.

Dogs sure do know how to subtly manipulate those that love them, there's no doubt about that.