Some days, maybe one of those bad hair/shaggy hair days, you might notice that your dog looks like you, or vice versa…Well, here’s another similarity to ponder: Your dogs may imitate you too.

A recently published study offers the first evidence that dogs can’t help but copy some of our body movements and behaviors, even when it’s not worth their while.

“This suggests, that, like humans, dogs are subject to ‘automatic imitation;’ they cannot inhibit online, the tendency to imitate head use and/or paw use,” said Friederike Range, lead author of the study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The experiment used ten adult dogs and their owners from Austria to perform various experiments. One part of the experiment involved dividing the dogs into two groups. The first group received a food reward when they copied their owner’s actions. The second group was rewarded if they did opposite what their owners did.

The study showed that the dogs were inclined to imitate their owners. In other words, the dogs had a “tendency automatically to imitate hand use and/or paw use by their owner, to imitate these actions even when it was costly to do so,” the authors said.

My first thought on reading this was that I hope my pups don’t pick up any of my bad habits, none of which will be mentioned here.

But the findings suggest that dogs pay attention to human activity. For example, by stretching your hand out in a demonstration while training your dog to shake, they will mirror the action and are inclined to learn quicker.

The authors of the study said that this interaction and imitation between humans and canines reinforces a unique bond that has few parallels in the animal kingdom. Although many species imitate each other, scientific evidence is hard pressed to find examples of one species that subconsciously imitates the behavior of another completely different species.

"Dogs are special animals, both in terms of their evolutionary history of domestication and the range and intensity of their developmental training by humans," the authors of the study said.

Dogs never cease to amaze. Next thing you know, I’ll be coming home to my dog standing in the mirror practicing his imitation of Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver.” You talkin’ to me!

If it were up to me, I’d have two Redbone Coonhounds named Old Dan and Little Ann and we’d stomp around the Ozark Mountains looking for adventures.

But I live and work in Chicago and the two full-blood hounds, my favorite dog breed since reading Wilson Rawl’s “Where the Red Fern Grows” two decades ago, would tear up my North Side apartment.

That was something I was willing to tolerate. Thankfully, my girlfriend stopped my Redbone Coonhound search before it began and we settled on two dogs, one small and one medium, that fit our city and surroundings nicely.

Fictional depictions of dogs, whether in print or on film, often capture our hearts with their stories, from Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” to the classic “Old Yeller,” and can spur consumers to buy them as pets.

We’ve seen a resurgence of this popular genre with recent films such as “Marley and Me,” starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston and the animated feature “Bolt,” with John Travolta and Miley Cyrus.

But the movies cause a great deal of concern for dog groups.

Kathie Shea, rescue chair for the Great Dane Club of America, said in a statement that the film “Marmaduke,” which opened last month with Owen Wilson as the Great Dane based on the famous comic strip, has increased the demand for Great Dane puppies tenfold.

“The problem is, a nine-month puppy will [weigh more than] 100 pounds and they will have a puppy brain,” Shea said. “Your Labrador puppy will be chewing your slipper. Your Great Dane puppy will be chewing your dining room table.”

Abandonment of Great Danes is common for inexperienced dog-owners as they can grow to 170 pounds and eat more than 10 cups of food a day.

In hopes to curb abandonments, Great Dane rescue groups have set up tables with rescued dogs at theaters and popular retail outlets to teach moviegoers and buyers about Great Danes and to let them experience the sheer massiveness of the animal.

"We're all holding our breath," said Sandy Suarez, director and founder of Michigan-based Great Dane Rescue Inc., in the statement. "We're planning on seeing a problem in about eight to nine months when the dog starts to get really big."