There is proof dogs evolved to melt your heart!

How humans and other animals communicate by looking at each other is a matter of great interest to scientists. Anne Burrows, an anatomist at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, had studied chimpanzee faces. She and the other researchers, including Juliane Kaminski, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, in England, joined together a few years ago to look at domestic animal facial expressions and musculature.

They started with horses and cats, and, she said, horses have facial movements similar to dogs, but cats do not. “It turned out they just don’t really move their faces at all.” The researchers did not explain how cats are nonetheless able to express highly sophisticated states of mind such as skepticism, disdain, deep self-satisfaction and world-weary ennui. That research may have to be left to the cats themselves.