Our pet dog who we have christened Quro is very intelligent. If he catches a whiff of a discarded piece of meat behind the door, he would be seen gently pawing the door to open it though tentatively with a pleading look written on his face. When this fails, he probes the narrow opening with his nose before I come to his assistance.
I've got a cat that tries to open doors but she hasn't managed to get the hang of it yet. Over the months she's obviously noticed how we open the doors in the house and she tries to do the same by jumping up and trying to pull the handle but it never actually opens for her.
In a way I'm glad because otherwise we'd be sat in the house freezing cold with all the doors that she's opened wide, because she never likes to stay in one room for too long!
Pets are known to be able to open doors, but how much do they actually understand about what they are doing? In a study done by Alexandra Horowitz of Barnard College, it was found that dogs could open doors if they were shown how to do it once. After that, the dogs were able to open the door again and again without any help. This seems to show that pets do have a basic understanding of what they are doing when they open doors.
However, it is not clear exactly what pets understand about this process. It is possible that they only know how to open the door because they have been shown how to do it, and they are not actually understanding what is happening. It is also possible that pets are aware of some of the mechanics behind opening doors, such as using their paws to push on objects or turning door knobs.
