Arias Leaves Stand After Describing Killing, Her Lies

Jodi Arias stepped down from the witness stand today after mounting an emotional effort to save herself from death row, insisting to the Arizona jury that an explosive fight with ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander led to his death, and that her lies about killing him masked deep regret and plans to commit suicide.

Arias, 32, will now face what is expected to be a withering cross-examination beginning Thursday from prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive to many witnesses throughout the trial and who is expected to go after Arias' claim that she was forced to kill Alexander or be killed herself.

She is charged with murder for her ex-boyfriend's death and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The day's dramatic testimony started with Arias describing the beginning of the fight on June 4, 2008 when she and Alexander were taking nude photos in his shower and she claims she accidentally dropped his new camera, causing Alexander to lose his temper. Enraged, he picked her up and body slammed her onto the tile floor, screaming at her, she told the jury.

Arias said she ran to his closet to get away from him, but could hear Alexander's footsteps coming after her down the hall. She grabbed a gun from his shelf and tried to keep running, but Alexander came after her, she said.

"I pointed it at him with both of my hands. I thought that would stop him, but he just kept running. He got like a linebacker. He got low and grabbed my waist, and as he was lunging at me the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot. I didn't even think I was holding the trigger," she said.

"But he lunged at me and we fell really hard toward the tile wall, so at this point I didn't even know if he had been shot. I didn't see anything different. We were struggling, wrestling, he's a wrestler.

"So he's grabbing at my clothes and I got up, and he's screaming angry, and after I broke away from him. He said 'f***ing kill you bitch,'" she testified.

Asked by her lawyer whether she was convinced Alexander intended to kill her, Arias answered, "For sure. He'd almost killed me once before and now he's saying he was going to." Arias had earlier testified that Alexander had once choked her.

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Jodi Arias Describes Violent Sex Before Shooting Watch Video

Jodi Arias Testifies Ex Assaulted Her, Broke Her Fingers Watch Video

Jodi Arias Gives Explicit Details About Doomed Relationship Watch Video

But Arias' story of the death struggle ended there as she told the court that she has no memory of stabbing or slashing Alexander whose body was later found with 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and two bullets in his head. She said she only remembered standing in the bathroom, dropping the knife on the tile floor, realizing the "horror" of what had happened, and screaming.

"I have no memory of stabbing him," she said. "There's a huge gap. I don't know if I blacked out or what, but there's a huge gap. The most clear memory I have after that point is driving in the desert."

Arias said that she decided in the desert not to admit to killing Alexander, a decision that would last for two years as Arias lied to friends, family, investigators and reporters about what really happened in Alexander's bathroom.

During that time she initially claimed she got lost that night while driving to a friend's house and never went to Alexander's home in Mesa,Ariz. She later changed her story and said two masked people, a man and a woman, burst into the home and killed Alexander and threatened to kill her family if she told anyone what happened.

She eventually confessed to killing her ex-boyfriend, but insisted it was self defense.

"The main reason (for lying) is because I was very ashamed of what happened. It's not something I ever imagined doing. It's not the kind of person I was. It was just shameful," she said. "I was also very scared of what might happen. I didn't want my family to know that I had done that, and I just couldn't bring myself to say that I did that."

"From day one there was a part of me that always wanted to (tell the truth) but didn't dare do that. I would rather have gone to my grave than admit I had done something like that," she said.

Arias said that she continued to lie because she figured she would never get caught; she was planning to kill herself before trial.

"I was concerned with how it would affect my family. I wanted to die. I was going to definitely kill myself," she said. "That was my plan. You can purchase different things in jail and I bought a bunch of Advil... and took it all in the next few days so it was in my system. They have razors for shaving, so I got one and took it apart one night with intentions to slit my wrists."

Arias said she balked at slitting her wrists after accidentally cutting herself, but that she still planned to commit suicide sometime in the future. When she told news reporters that "no jury would convict her," she claims she said it believing that she would be dead before they'd have a chance to put her on trial, Arias testified.

Arias said support from the public and her family eventually led her to change her mind.

"My family remained very supportive, and told me 'it doesn't matter what happens, we love you anyway.' I realized even if I told the truth they would still be there and wouldn't walk away," she testified.

"By the time spring, 2010, rolled around, I confessed. I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day and that the intruder story was all BS pretty much."

She said that her testimony today, a third version of events, was the truth.

Arias was arrested a month after Alexander's death, and prosecutors have argued that her behavior during those weeks showed a lack of remorse for the killing and an attempt to get away with murder.

Arias said today that after she killed Alexander and drove away from his Mesa, Ariz., home in a panic, it dawned on her that police would soon be looking for Alexander's killer, and she decided that she would pretend the bloody confrontation had never happened.

"I knew that it was really bad, that my life was probably done now. I wished it was just a nightmare I could wake up from, but I knew I had messed up pretty badly and the inevitable was going to be something I could not really run from," she testified.

"I didn't want anyone to know that that had happened or that I did it, so I started taking steps in the aftermath to cover it up. I did a whole bunch of things to try to make it seem like I was never there," she said.

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Today on New Scientist: 19 February 2013

Doctors would tax sugary drinks to combat obesity

Hiking the price of fizzy drinks would cut consumption and so help fight obesity, urges the British Academy of Medical Royal Colleges

Space station's dark matter hunter coy about findings

Researchers on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which sits above the International Space Station, have collected their first results - but won't reveal them for two weeks

Huge telescopes could spy alien oxygen

Hunting for oxygen in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets is a tough job, but a new wave of giant telescopes should be up to the task

Evolution's detectives: Closing in on missing links

Technology is taking the guesswork out of finding evolution's turning points, from the first fish with legs to our own recent forebears, says Jeff Hecht

Moody Mercury shows its hidden colours

False-colour pictures let us see the chemical and physical landscape of the normally beige planet closest to the sun

LHC shuts down to prepare for peak energy in 2015

Over the next two years, engineers will be giving the Large Hadron Collider the makeover it needs to reach its maximum design energy

Insert real news events into your mobile game

From meteor airbursts to footballing fracas, mobile games could soon be brimming with news events that lend them more currency

3D-printing pen turns doodles into sculptures

The 3Doodle, which launched on Kickstarter today, lets users draw 3D structures in the air which solidify almost instantly

We need to rethink how we name exoplanets

Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, Alan Stern and his company Uwingu have asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama?

A shocking cure: Plug in for the ultimate recharge

An electrical cure for ageing attracted the ire of the medical establishment. But could the jazz-age inventor have stumbled upon a genuine therapy?

Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Planting more crops to meet the biofuel demand is destroying grasslands and pastures in the central US, threatening wildlife

Read More..

Pro-family and women-friendly workplaces called for by PAP Women's Wing

Singapore: The Women's Wing of the People' Action Party wants to see bolder government intervention in the drive for pro-family and women-friendly workplaces.

In a position paper submitted to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on Wednesday, it called for legislation to allow employees with children below the age of 12-years to request for flexible work arrangements.

Such requests, it said, should be seriously considered by employers.

It's also proposing legislation to allow employees to take no-pay leave for up to one year to take care of their children, and have their positions guaranteed when they return to work.

To champion and implement the necessary Human Resource policy changes, the paper suggested that the government set up a one-stop centre that can also provide training and handle complains.

The Women's Wing also wants to see better protection for freelance and contract workers - to include CPF contributions, medical benefits and injury compensation.

It also suggested a Back to Work Employment credit scheme - similar to the special employment credit scheme for older workers - to offset employers' costs for on-the-job training for women and job redesign.

People's Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament for West Coast GRC, Ms Foo Mee Har says the government needs to take bold legislative action to ensure a shift towards a pro-family work culture.

- CNA/sf

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HTC One takes display pixel density crown

The HTC One has one eye-popping display.

(Credit:
HTC)

The HTC One has taken the pixel density crown, leaving phones like Retina iPhone 5 in the dust.

First, to get a sense of the HTC One screen's density, a quick comparison to Microsoft's Surface Pro, which has also been praised for its display chops, puts this into perspective.

The Surface Pro packs a resolution of 1,920x1,080 into a 10.6-inch panel. One of the highest pixel densities (208 pixels per inch, to be exact) for a
Windows 8 PC to date.

The HTC One packs that same resolution (1,920x1,080) into a 4.7-inch screen. That's more than 2 million pixels, yielding 468 pixels per inch (ppi).

"That makes it the current record holder for announced/shipping consumer products," Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, told CNET.

Some products get close, though. Last summer, Sharp and LG announced a new class of very high-ppi displays with 440ppi, which is 1,920x1,080 in a 5-inch (phablet) size, Soneira added.

The first shipping product in the U.S. with this display is the
HTC Droid DNA, which began shipping in December and it has a Sharp display, according to Soneira.

And other manufacturers including Samsung are working on this new format. And LG is now also shipping a 440 ppi display, which, though a slightly lower pixel density, is "visually indistinguishable" from HTC One's display, he said.

Close up of HTC One's icons.

(Credit:
HTC)

Sharp is making its 440+ ppi screens using a technology called Continuous Grain Silicon. "It has higher electron mobility than either IGZO or amorphous silicon, which allows for maximum aperture ratio/light transmission," according to Soneira.

Translation: More light can get through the closely packed pixels than conventional technology, leading to brighter very-high-resolution screens.

And what about the inevitable comparison to Apple's Retina display tech?

"Now 468 ppi is substantially higher than the
iPhone 5's 326 ppi. What does that mean visually? In terms of what Apple calls a Retina Display (equivalent to 20/20 Vision), for 20/20 Vision, 10.5 inches is the viewing distance where the eye can just resolve the individual iPhone 326 ppi pixels for people with standard 20/20 Vision."

Soneira continues. "For 468 ppi, the 20/20 Vision pixel resolution distance is 7.4 inches -- much closer than a typical viewing distance for a 4.7 inch display. Watching further away from the minimum viewing distance means the eye can't resolve the pixels and so the high ppi is often wasted."

But not always. "The only place where [this]...level of sharpness is important is for computer generated text and graphics. Where 440 ppi [and above] will make a difference is when people are intently visually studying the display image for fine image details," he said.

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Florida Python Hunt Captures 68 Invasive Snakes

It's a wrap—the 2013 Python Challenge has nabbed 68 invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, organizers say. And experts are surprised so many of the elusive giants were caught.

Nearly 1,600 people from 38 states—most of them inexperienced hunters—registered for the chance to track down one of the animals, many of which descend from snakes that either escaped or were dumped into the wild.

Since being introduced, these Asian behemoths have flourished in Florida's swamps while also squeezing out local populations of the state's native mammals, especially in the Everglades. (See Everglades pictures.)

To highlight the python problem, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and its partners launched the 2013 Python Challenge, which encouraged registered participants to catch as many pythons as they could between January 12 and February 10 in state wildlife-management areas within the Everglades.

The commission gave cash prizes to those who harvested the most and longest pythons.

Frank Mazzotti, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Florida and scientific leader for the challenge, said before the hunt that he would consider a harvest of 70 animals a success—and 68 is close enough to say the event met its goals.

It's unknown just how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but catching 68 snakes is an "exceptional" number, added Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Snakes in the Grass

Finding 68 snakes is impressive, experts say, since it's so hard to find pythons. For one, it's been unusually warm lately in Florida, which means the reptiles—which normally sun themselves to regulate their body temperature—are staying in the brush, making them harder to detect, Krysko said.

On top of that, Burmese pythons are notoriously hard to locate, experts say.

The animals are so well camouflaged that people can stand right next to one and not notice it. "It's rare that you get to see them stretched out—most of the time they're blending in," said Cheryl Millett, a biologist at the Nature Conservancy, a Python Challenge partner.

What's more, the reptiles are ambush hunters, which means they spend much of their time lying in wait in dense vegetation, not moving, she said.

That's why Millett gave the hunters some tips, such as looking along the water's edge, where the snakes like to hang out, and also simply listening for "something big moving through the vegetation."

Even so, catching 68 snakes is "actually is a little more than I expected," said Millett.

No Walk in the Park

Ruben Ramirez, founder of the company Florida Python Hunters, won two prizes in the competition: First place for the most snakes captured—18—and second place for the largest python, which he said was close to 11 feet (3.4 meters) long. The biggest Burmese python caught in Florida, nabbed in 2012, measured 17.7 feet (5.4 meters).

"They're there, but they're not as easy to find as people think," said Ramirez. "You're not going to be stumbling over pythons in Miami." (Related blog post: "What It's Like to Be a Florida Python Hunter.")

All participants, some of whom had never hunted a python before, were trained to identify the difference between a Burmese python and Florida's native snakes, said Millett. No native snakes were accidentally killed, she said.

Hunters were also told to kill the snakes by either putting a bolt or a bullet through their heads, or decapitating them-all humane methods that result "in immediate loss of consciousness and destruction of the brain," according to the Python Challenge website.

Ramirez added that some of the first-time or amateur hunters had different expectations. "I think they were expecting to walk down a canal and see a 10-foot [3-meter], 15-foot [4.5-meter] Burmese python. They thought it'd be a walk in the park."

Stopping the Spread

Completely removing these snakes from the wild isn't easy, and some scientists see the Python Challenge as helping to achieve part of that goal. (Read an opposing view on the Python Challenge: "Opinion: Florida's Great Snake Hunt Is a Cheap Stunt.")

"You're talking about 68 more animals removed from the population that shouldn't be there—that's 68 more mouths that aren't being fed," said the Florida museum's Krysko. (Read about giant Burmese python meals that went bust.)

"I support any kind of event or program that not only informs the general public about introduced species, but also gets the public involved in removing these nonnative animals that don't belong there."

The Nature Conservancy's Millett said the challenge had two positive outcomes: boosting knowledge for both science and the public.

People who didn't want to hunt or touch the snakes could still help, she said, by reporting sightings of exotic species to 888-IVE-GOT-1, through free IveGot1 apps, or www.ivegot1.org.

Millett runs a public-private Nature Conservancy partnership called Python Patrol that the Florida wildlife commission will take on in the fall. The program focuses not only on eradicating invasive pythons but on preventing the snake from moving to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Key West.

Necropsies on the captured snakes will reveal what pythons are eating, and location data from the hunters will help scientists figure out where the snakes are living—valuable data for researchers working to stop their spread.

"This is the most [number of] pythons that have been caught in this short of a period of time in such an extensive area," said the University of Florida's Mazzotti.

"It's an unprecedented sample, and we're going to get a lot of information out of that."

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Arias Says Violent Sex Preceded Killing

Jodi Arias and her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander,, had increasingly violent sex in which he tied her to his bed, twisted her arm, bent her over a desk for anal sex, and made sex videos with her in the hours leading up to the stabbing and shooting frenzy that left Alexander dead.

It was a day in which Arias, 32, inched closer to telling the court how the killing of Alexander took place, but after several hours of increasingly emotional testimony the court was adjourned until Wednesday.

In her sixth day on the stand, Arias tearfully described the sex-filled hours that led to Alexander's death on June 4, 2008. She is charged with murder for killing her former boyfriend, but claims she was forced to kill him self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

"He tied me up, (on) the bed. It's not my favorite but it's not unbearable," Arias told the court.

She said he used a kitchen knife in the bathroom to cut the rope to the proper length, but she didn't remember whether he left the knife in the bathroom or brought it back to the nightstand in the bedroom.

"There are a lot gaps that day... a lot of things I don't remember that day," she said.

Arias and Alexander then took graphic sexual photos of one another and made a sex video, both of which Arias said were Alexander's ideas. Arias has girlish braids in the pictures.

But the mood of the afternoon turned, she said, when Alexander became angry over a scratched computer disk of photos she gave him. He threw the CD and Arias said she became "apprehensive" of his rising temper.

"I know he's getting angry because Napoleon [Alexander's dog] got up and left the room and he always leaves the room when he gets mad." she testified.

"I don't know that I was consciously thinking (of violence) but I was more tense. I stood up, went to walk over to him, to rub his back and make sure he was okay," she said. "But he grabbed me on the upper arms, spun me around and grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back, and bent me over the desk, and pressed up against me."

Charlie Leight/Pool/The Arizona Republic/AP Photo

Jodi Arias Gives Explicit Details About Doomed Relationship Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Why She Said She Did It Watch Video

Jodi Arias Tells How She Met Ex-Boyfriend on Stand Watch Video

"I was scared he was going to throw me or something, kick me," she continued. "He pressed his groin up against my butt, did a few thrusts and then started pulling my pants down."

The pair then had anal sex, which Arias said pacified Alexander.

"I was very relieved. I felt like we had avoided catastrophe. It could have led to another fight," she said.

Instead of a fight, Alexander, who was 27 and a devout Mormon, and Arias decide to go upstairs and take more nude photos of one another. Arias said she hoped the photos would satisfy Alexander over his frustration with the scratched CD.

Evidence introduced earlier in the trial show that Alexander was killed while Arias was photographing Alexander in the shower.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Earlier, Arias explained that she wasn't planning to visit Alexander during her roadtrip from her home in California, but was convinced by him to spontaneously take a detour to his house for sex and to hang out.

"The very last time I called Travis it was kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, he had been very sweet and was guilting me and making me feel bad that I was taking this big trip without going to see him," Arias said this afternoon.

"When I called him last time it was just like all right, I'm going," she said. "(Sex) was our thing at that time. I wasn't going to go there, stay the night and not do that."

Arias' attorney, Kirk Nurmi, asked her repeatedly on the stand if Arias brought a gun or knife with her on the roadtrip and to Alexander's house. She said that she did not.

She also denied a series of allegations made by the prosecution that she dyed her hair, rented an inconspicuous car, borrowed gas cans, turned off her cell phone, and switched money around her bank accounts as she left for Alexander's house because she was planning to murder him when she got there.

Arias said that her hair remained the same color, auburn-brown, throughout May and June, that she rented a car because her own car was not stable enough for highway travel, that she requested a white car instead of a red one because police pull red ones over more often, and that she transferred money to a business banking account for a tax write-off to classify it as a business trip.

The testimony about the road trip and Arias' planning could be key to the jury as they decide whether the killing was pre-meditated, as the prosecution claims. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted of murder with aggravating factors such as pre-meditation.

Arias said that she "didn't sleep at all last night" before testifying about the dramatic incident today. Her comment was stricken from the record.

Arias also described a barrage of threatening text messages sent by Alexander in which he told her he would exact "revenge" on her soon and called her a "sociopath."

She told the court that Alexander's temper would make her "cower."

The messages show a growing discord between the pair in April 2008, less than two months before Arias killed Alexander.

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Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Say goodbye to the grass. The scramble for biofuels is rapidly killing off unique grasslands and pastures in the central US.

Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University in Brookings analysed satellite images of five states in the western corn belt. They found that 530,000 hectares of grassland disappeared under blankets of maize and soya beans between 2006 and 2011. The rate was fastest in South Dakota and Iowa, with as much as 5 per cent of pasture becoming cropland each year.

The trend is being driven by rising demand for the crops, partly through incentives to use them as fuels instead of food.

The switch from meadows to crops is causing a crash in populations of ground-nesting birds. One of the US's most important breeding grounds for wildfowl, an area called the Prairie Pothole Region, is also at risk, with South Dakota's crop fields now within 100 metres of the wetlands. "Half of North American ducks breed here," says Wright.

Bill Henwood of the Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative in Vancouver, Canada, says the results are distressing. "Exchanging real environmental impacts for the dubious benefits of biofuels is counterproductive," he says. "Last year's record drought in the corn belt all but wiped out the crops anyway."

Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1215404110

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S'pore, Malaysia agree on high-speed rail link

SINGAPORE: Singapore and Malaysia have agreed to build a high speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

This was announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Tuesday.

In a joint statement, they said this is a strategic development in the bilateral relations that will dramatically improve the connectivity between Malaysia and Singapore.

They added that it will usher in a new era of strong growth, prosperity and opportunities for both countries.

Mr Lee and Mr Najib also said the High Speed Rail link will facilitate seamless travel between KL and Singapore, enhance business links, and bring peoples of Singapore and Malaysia closer together.

They added that ultimately the project will give both countries greater stakes in each other's prosperity and success.

The leaders have tasked the joint ministerial committee between both countries to look into the details and modalities of the high speed rail link.

- CNA/al

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Chinese Army linked to hacks of U.S. companies, agencies

An "overwhelming percentage" of cyber attacks on U.S. corporations, government agencies, and organizations originate from a 12-story office tower on the outskirts of Shanghai that's connected to the People's Liberation Army, according to an extensive New York Times report.

The newspaper cites a 60-page report by U.S. security firm Mandiant traces the activities of a sophisticated Chinese hacking groups -- known in some circles as "Comment Crew" or "Shanghai Group" -- to the headquarters of PLA Unit 61398. The report notes that a body of digital forensic evidence led investigators to the building's doorstep but was unable to confirm that the hackers were inside the building.

However, Mandiant argues that there is realistic explanation for the large number of attacks emanating from such a small neighborhood populated with restaurants and massage parlors.

"Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398," Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, told the Times, "or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood."

As part of its report, Mandiant also released a highly detailed video (see below) it says shows actual attacker sessions conducted by a hacker group in China Mandiant calls Advanced Persistent Threat group 1, or APT1.

"Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China's cyber threat actors," Mandiant wrote.

Chinese authorities told the Times that its country does not engage in computer hacking.

The probe came after the newspaper revealed last month that it was the victim of a four-month cyberattack in which hackers stole the passwords of its employees in an effort to get information on sources and contacts for a story on Chinese Prime Minster Wen Jiabao. According to the Times, the methods these hackers used were similar to past attacks by the Chinese military.

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post also reported being the victims of similar hacks. The newspaper hired the firm to investigate the hack but found that Comment Crew was not responsible for the sophisticated hack.

Mandiant said it had been tracking Comment Crew for more than six years and had traced their activities to IP addresses that were registered in the same neighborhood as Unit 61398's building.

"It's where more than 90 percent of the attacks we followed come from," Mandia told the Times.

The report comes out as the U.S. begins a more aggressive policy of cyber defense against hackers like those suspected to be in China. Under a long-anticipated executive order signed last week by President Obama, companies will be allowed to share confidential information such as hackers' unique digital signatures with intelligence agencies without oversight.

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Confirmed: Dogs Sneak Food When People Aren't Looking

Many dog owners will swear their pups are up to something when out of view of watchful eyes. Shoes go missing, couches have mysterious teeth marks, and food disappears. They seem to disregard the word "no."

Now, a new study suggests dogs might understand people even better than we thought. (Related: "Animal Minds.")

The research shows that domestic dogs, when told not to snatch a piece of food, are more likely to disobey the command in a dark room than in a lit room.

This suggests that man's best friend is capable of understanding a human's point of view, said study leader Juliane Kaminski, a psychologist at the U.K.'s University of Portmouth.

"The one thing we can say is that dogs really have specialized skills in reading human communication," she said. "This is special in dogs." (Read "How to Build a Dog.")

Sneaky Canines

Kaminski and colleagues recruited 84 dogs, all of which were more than a year old, motivated by food, and comfortable with both strangers and dark rooms.

The team then set up experiments in which a person commanded a dog not to take a piece of food on the floor and repeated the commands in a room with different lighting scenarios ranging from fully lit to fully dark.

They found that the dogs were four times as likely to steal the food—and steal it more quickly—when the room was dark. (Take our dog quiz.)

"We were thinking what affected the dog was whether they saw the human, but seeing the human or not didn't affect the behavior," said Kaminski, whose study was published recently in the journal Animal Cognition.

Instead, she said, the dog's behavior depended on whether the food was in the light or not, suggesting that the dog made its decision based on whether the human could see them approaching the food.

"In a general sense, [Kaminski] and other researchers are interested in whether the dog has a theory of mind," said Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard University, who was not involved in the new study.

Something that all normal adult humans have, theory of mind is "an understanding that others have different perspective, knowledge, feelings than we do," said Horowitz, also the author of Inside of a Dog.

Smarter Than We Think

While research has previously been focused on our closer relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—interest in dog cognition is increasing, thanks in part to owners wanting to know what their dogs are thinking. (Pictures: How smart are these animals?)

"The study of dog cognition suddenly began about 15 years ago," Horowitz said.

Part of the reason for that, said Brian Hare, director of the Duke Canine Cognition Lab and author of The Genius of Dogs, is that "science thought dogs were unremarkable."

But "dogs have a genius—years ago we didn't know what that was," said Hare, who was not involved in the new research. (See pictures of the the evolution of dogs, from wolf to woof.)

Many of the new dog studies are variations on research done with chimpanzees, bonobos, and even young children. Animal-cognition researchers are looking into dogs' ability to imitate, solve problems, or navigate social environments.

So just how much does your dog understand? It's much more than you—and science—probably thought.

Selectively bred as companions for thousands of years, dogs are especially attuned to human emotions—and, study leader Kaminski said, are better at reading human cues than even our closest mammalian relatives.

"There has been a physiological change in dogs because of domestication," Duke's Hare added. "Dogs want to bond with us in ways other species don't." (Related: "Dogs' Brains Reorganized by Breeding.")

While research reveals more and more insight into the minds of our furry best friends, Kaminski said, "We still don't know just how smart they are."

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