What did overweight dogs do after the two bowls of food were placed in front of them?

Two bowls of food were placed in front of overweight dogs, one with a more appealing meal and the other empty or containing food they did not like as much. Hungarian researchers found that normal weight dogs continue to obey instructions to look for a second bowl for food while the obese animals refused after a few rounds. The results were surprising since the researchers had expected the overweight dogs to do anything for food.
    We expected that the overweight dogs would see a neutral situation positively too, and that they would expect the pot to contain food no matter how much energy required for them. The main thing is to find some food but in this test we saw the opposite. The overweight dogs took a negative view and did not expect to find food in the neutral place.
    This means, the researchers say, that the overweight canines tried to maximize their food intake from the higher quality food and hesitated to do the task when the food reward was uncertain. Our explanation for this is that they go for the sure thing.
    If the situation is uncertain and they cannot find food, then they are unwilling to invest energy in searching for it; for them the main thing is to find the right food with the least energy. This is where we can draw a parallel with human obesity where food rewards and a negative psychological state are behind obesity.
    So dogs which share our living environment may be good standings for scientists studying the causes and consequences of obesity. They have very similar social cognitive capacity to humans. So for dogs and many humans good food is a reward worth waiting for.