Can dogs understand hand gestures?

I’ve always wondered about the results of these studies, because in my experience, you have to teach dogs to look in the direction you are pointing. When they are young, it seems to me that they pay no attention to the direction you are indicating, and simply go to your hand and sniff it. Granted, it is pretty easy to teach them to follow a point, but you DO have to teach them to do it. Various research projects have shown that dogs go directly toward food hidden under one of two objects if a person points toward it, while wolves and chimps do not. Perhaps a good explanation at this point on the issue is that there appears to be an innate tendency in dogs to be predisposed to learn to follow a pointing gesture. This is basically a nature AND nurture argument: that dogs are indeed different than other species because of their co-evolution with us, but that the issue is more complex than a simple innate ability to understand what a point means. The research does seem clear that as smart as they are, chimps really don’t ‘get’ what a pointed arm and finger mean. But you’ll note that the adult dogs did very well, while the comment about the pups is “Even six-month old puppies catch on pretty quickly…”. That suggests to me that there was learning involved, and that the behavior is not 100% innate, which fits with my experience with dogs. Their responsiveness might also relate to an ability to view humans as cooperative beings who are ‘on their side’.