To all dog lovers out there, if you’ve always felt that you love dogs more than humans, there's a study that finally proves it.

Dogs over humans?

A study published in a US academic journal Society & Animals found that people are more empathetic towards dogs than fellow humans.

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The results were based on two experiments conducted by UK medical research charity Harrison's Fund and researchers from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

In the first experiment, two phony donation campaigns seeking monetary assistance for battered dogs and abused humans were staged.

The ads featured a canine and a human separately.

"Harrison the dog" received far more contributions than "Harrison the person".

In the second experiment, a total of 240 students were presented with four fake newspaper clippings of a police report, with four different victims: An adult, a human baby, a puppy, and an adult dog.

The victim was reported to have been attacked by a person with a baseball bat, and respondents were asked to rate which of the four victims they’d rather help.

This time, the human baby came in first, with the puppy and adult dog coming in at a close second and third.

The adult man was ranked last.

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Dogs as fur babies

Why is this so?

According to the researchers, this is because subjects viewed their dogs not as animals, but rather as "fur babies", or family members alongside human children.

They also suggest that we’re more likely to feel empathy for a victim if we consider them to be helpless and unable to look after themselves.

As with a ‘blaming the victim’ situation, respondents might view adults as responsible for and capable of removing themselves from the abusive situation; we expect the adult to walk away, as we would think we would do if in such a situation. With a young child or a dog, respondents might see them as unable to leave a harmful situation.

In other words, we feel more for dogs as they appear more vulnerable than adults.

A new meaning to puppy eyes

Another possible reason why people seem to prefer dogs to other people is the former’s ability to communicate with facial expressions.

In another study published by Scientific Reports in October, researchers found that dogs make more facial movements when a human is paying attention to them, even when there were no treats involved.

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Now, that's a really paw-erful connection.

Top image via Getty Images