Jul 23, 2014 03:58 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

A new study has confirmed what plenty of dog owners already knew, that man's best friend can be quite clingy and needy.

According to the Washington Post, the new research suggests dogs feel jealousy like humans do. Though it is hardly a revelation, the study represents a new way to examine one of the more complicated human emotions, as if any of them are easy to dissect.

The researchers published their study in the journal PLOS One.

"Many people have assumed that jealousy is a social construction of human beings - or that it's an emotion specifically tied to sexual and romantic relationships," study lead author Christine Harris, a psychology professor at the University of California - San Diego, said in a press release. "Our results challenge these ideas, showing that animals besides ourselves display strong distress whenever a rival usurps a loved one's affection."

For the study, Harris assembled dog owners devote their attention to three different objects in front of their pet. One was a picture book that the dog owner read aloud and the other two were a toy dog and a bucket Halloween candy, an item the pet had never seen before.

Harris found the pet dogs to react most when their owner was paying more attention to the toy dog, which moved and barked. The pet dogs then reacted least when their owner was reading the book.

Harris told the Post she got the idea for the study when she was visiting her parents and their three Border Collies. She said if she was petting two at a time, they would act with hostility toward one another and try to be the only subject of affection.

"I'd pet two of them at a time and it wouldn't have been surprising if that had made the third want my attention, too," Harris said. "To me, that really fit with the core motivation of jealousy."

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