Long-time dog lovers swear their pets can read their minds. Perhaps that’s because the brains of people and their pooches have a lot more in common than previously thought.

“Darwin basically said that anything that is useful doesn’t just appear out of nothing,” said Stanley Coren, an author, psychologist and dog researcher who was speaking Saturday at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention in Toronto.

“We’ll begin to see glimmers of it in more primitive form in other species. And I think that’s the way it works when it comes to consciousness.”

Research shows dogs have similar intelligence to a 24- to 30-month old child, Coren said. For the record, cats are considered to have the intelligence of an 18-month-old.

The average dog has a vocabulary of about 165 words. The smartest canines understand up to about 250 words and are able to figure out new ones on their own.

“That kind of fast language learning we thought was only possible among humans and some of the higher apes.”

But more than that, tests suggest that dogs and apes both have some of the same basic emotions — fear, anger, disgust and pleasure — that toddlers experience, said Coren, while both the animal groups are missing some of the more complex, learned emotions such as guilt.

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