Dogs are more expressive when they are around people than when they are alone or with other dogs and change their expression to communicate rather than to express an emotion.
According to a new study, our disheartening friends do not use facial expressions to respond to gifts like food, suggesting that mimic techniques only occur in people's presence as a form of communication, writes Science Alert.
"Now we can be sure that facial expressions made by dogs are dependent on the attentional state of the audience and are not just the result of joy. In our study, they produced more expressions when someone looked, but food did not have the same effect, "said Juliane Kaminski of the University of Portsmouth, the author of this study.
"The findings seem to support the evidence that dogs are sensitive to human attention, and expressions are attempts at communication, not just emotional expressions," he adds.
The study included 24 dogs aged between 1 and 12 years. They were kept in a leash at one meter of human, and facial expressions were analyzed during a series of interactions using a DogFACS Dog Facial Expression Analysis Tool.
There have been two ways of human interaction, facing the dog or back. For each of these, researchers tested facial expressions with current and non-food. Dogs were more expressive when a man looked at them, whether they were eating or not.
The study illustrates that after about 30,000 years since the dogs are sitting next to humans, the quadrupeds have adapted to communicate with us, "making faces" that show feelings of joy, enthusiasm or well-known expression of guilt. Interestingly, man's best friends have reached the same wavelength with man, indicating the possibility of cognitive empathy.
source:descopera.ro