Is this any kind of life for a dog? It is a vicarious, low-level existential crisis—what does she need, what is she?—that her imploring eyes seem designed to produce.

The dog’s eyes were designed to induce human concern, of course. A dog’s attentiveness to humans is one of the central differences between a dog and a wolf, probably the determinative one. “Dogs look at people,” says James Serpell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You can boil it down to something as simple as gaze patterns. With a hand-bred wolf, there are issues getting their attention. Whereas a dog is constantly monitoring the owner for clues on how to behave and what to do.” A dog develops attachments to specific humans, in ways that wolves won’t. Whereas a wolf will try to solve a difficult problem itself (they are, apparently, brilliant at unlocking gates), a dog will quickly give up and look to its human to figure things out.