...
By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Move over Cillian Murphy, because there's a new actor in town generating Oscar buzz.
Zeus the German shepherd may only be a dog but he's been busy recently giving viewers everywhere "paws" for thought thanks to a video posted to TikTok by mobile pet groomer Kabooky Jones.
It finds Zeus, front and center, engaging in a battle that has raged for as long as dogs have served as canine companions to humans everywhere. Simply put: it's bath time and if there's one thing Zeus knows in the video, it's that he doesn't want a bath.
Read More on Pets
That provides him with all the motivation necessary to deliver a standout performance as a dog pretending to be asleep. It's an impressive display, with Zeus showing an impressive level of cunning and deception to try and get out of the much-needed clean.
Unfortunately for him, this is not Jones's first rodeo. She's likely seen many a dog feign sleep to escape her clutches down the years and she's not buying it for a second.
Fortunately for dog lovers everywhere, what she is doing is seeing the funny side of it all, so much so that she's not only filmed Zeus's efforts but also posted the results to her TikTok page, where the video has racked up 6.2 million views and counting. It can be watched here.
Though Zeus's efforts proved a source of much amusement, they also highlighted the way dogs are capable of deception.
It's an idea that was previously showcased in a 2017 study published in the Journal Animal Cognition in which 27 dogs were paired with two different human partners. During the initial phase of the research, it was established to the canines involved that one of the partners was acting "cooperatively" by giving food to them while the other was "competitive" and kept it for themselves.
The dogs were then put through a test in which they were tasked with leading one of these two partners to one of three locations. One contained a favored food item, one had a non-preferred food item in it and the third was empty.
What they found was that while the dogs were happy to lead the "cooperative" partner to the popular foodstuffs, the more competitive human was more often taken to the empty box.
Zeus might be using a different kind of deception to try and avoid the bath but his behavior is still in line with the findings of the research. While he may be guilty of play acting, his performative efforts earned him much acclaim among those watching on social media.
"Dogs are liars, but bad liars," one viewer commented, with another writing: "he deserved an Oscar for that performance." A third agreed that he was clearly a "paid actor," while one took things even further, commenting: "Why does he look like Ross from Friends?"
For a fifth viewer, the whole affair was entirely relatable: "My dogs fakes that he's hungry when it's bedtime." Another, meanwhile, claimed: "My children do the same."
Newsweek has contacted Jones for comment.
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
...
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines