We know that dogs can read human faces, it turns out that babies can infer the meaning of different dog barks:
New research shows babies have a handle on the meaning of different dog barks - despite little or no previous exposure to dogs.
Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.
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Probably there are commonalities in emotional sounds and expressions innately recognizable to all mammals.
[[Probably there are commonalities in emotional sounds and expressions innately recognizable to all mammals.]]
Ditto and I would say millions of years of being prey to hunting and carnivorous animals homo sapien sapien species group memory also is easily accessed by the basic baby brain before years of social human learning changes it or adapts it to higher learning knowledge based on wider context. Always love the stamp of SCIENCE! on commonly observed and known knowledge by people/ethnic groups, etc. Some common folklore is more mythical and unscientific but most come from real observations and repetitive behavior cycles without scientific research experiment control but real life can't always be repeated in the lab and live observation research done.
Sometimes that higher learning is counter to innate understanding, ie some minorities have been taught as children to be terrified of dogs, regardless of breed or size or the dog's actions of tail wagging, submissive actions.