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 FROM America there is new research that indicates that your dog could be laughing behind your back.
Have you ever noticed that when your dog wants to play it will make sharp whisper sounds to other dogs in the vicinity?
To us, the sound the dog makes is like panting. But American scientists believe those exhalations contain a far broader range of sound frequencies - including laughter.
A team led by psychologist Patricia Simonet, of Sierra Nevada College in Lake Tahoe, took a microphone into parks to record the excited noise that dogs make when they encounter each other.
Professor Siinonet's research offers fascinating new insights into the animal kingdom.
"People kept coming up to talk to us, so we finally had to wear signs explaining what we were trying to record," she said.
Professor Simonet played tapes the broad-frequency pants she gathered in the parks to 15 other dogs - mostly puppies - in an observation room. The puppies responded by picking up a toy, or trotting towards a potential playmate.
When she tried to mimic the pant herself, the dogs flocked to her. Yet they did not respond at all when she broadcast growls.
The initial research suggests that dogs usually make their laugh-pant noise when they meet other dogs, Professor Simonet told a meeting of the Animal Behaviour Society.
The sound is a communication tool that allows other dogs to pick up their joyful mood.
Professor Simonet discovered that dogs use at least four sound patterns - barks, growls, whines and laughs. They employ all four in the course of a day but reserve the laugh sound exclusively for playtime. 
As in humans, a dog's laughter appears to be infectious, leading other dogs to respond with a mirrored sound of their own.
Marc Bekoff, of the University of Colorado, said he recognises the panting sound described in Professor Simonet's research. "Whether it turns out to be like a laugh or not doesn't matter in the end because what's important are all the questions it opens up about how animal communications work," he said.
Meanwhile, Japanese scientists have invented a piece of electronic wizardry that promises to turn every dog owner into Doctor Dolittle (Hugh Lofting's fictional country doctor who could talk to the animals by translating barks and whines).
The device can interpret the different sounds used by canines and turn them into human emotions, its inventors claim.
The `Bow-lingual' consists of a two-inch microphone that is attached to the dog's collar and transmits the sounds to a palm-sized console held by the animal's master.
The computer contained within it has a vocabulary of 200 words which it uses to convey states such frustration, menace, hunger, joy and sorrow.
If the machine picks up a series of similar emotional triggers it will combine them into a comprehensible sentence such as `I feel lonely, play with me more.'
In addition, the system's memory allows it to record a whole day's worth of animal emotion so that owners returning from work can find out how their pet's day has been. 
In the event of a satisfying day at home, the console would, for example, display: `Lots of enjoyable things happened, a mega happy day'.
Roger Mugford, a British psychologist who specialises in animal-human relations, claimed the system has a solid grounding in science.
"There are common elements to the speech of every dog," he said. "Just as with humans, every dog develops a personal and idiosyncratic speech of its own."
But the device, due to go on sale in Japan initially for around 60 pounds, cannot yet claim to be able to interpret every nuance of a dog's inner thoughts. The sound-based system is unable to pick up on animals' more physical means of communication such as tail wagging.
Mr Mugford admits that for owners who know their pets properly the device should not provide any great insights. "If a dog owner is so uninformed about his pet that he needs a computer to interpret what it wants, then he should not be a dog owner," he said.
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