B1- Describing people and Animals

DOES YOUR DOG LOOK LIKE YOU?

You often hear people say that dogs look like their owners. It sounds like a crazy idea, but a new study from California suggests that it's true - but only in certain
circumstances.
Researchers wanted to find out if people really do look like their dogs, and just how this happens. First of all, they took photos of 45 dogs and their owners. They mixed
the photos up and asked a group of people to match them. 
The people who took part in the research were able to match most of the owners with their dogs if they were pure-bred - dogs whose parents are both the same type of
dog. However, they weren't able to do the matching for mongrels - dogs with parents of two different types. The researchers have suggested that this may be because
people choose dogs which look like themselves, and people who want pure-bred dogs choose their pets more carefully.
The researchers say it isn't clear how the people in their study were able to do the matching. They didn't simply match hairy dogs with hairy people or big dogs with big
people. It seems that they used a more complicated method, such as matching friendly looking dogs with friendly looking people.