2023-07-07 00:53:04
The domestication process of dogs, their behavior, as well as their ability to distinguish our sound expressions, have been widely studied by science. However, these studies on cognitive ability of dogs to understand human communication have focused primarily on pets.
Although these are a valuable model, they only represent a small fraction of the world’s dog population. For this reason, a new article recently published in the journal PeerJ Life and Environment, led by the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine in Austria (VMU), has focused its work on animals living in the wild. Until now it was known that they show a strong inclination towards social contact with humans and understand certain aspects of our communication.
“‘Village’ dogs are free to roam, interact with other species and congeners and reproduce. They are not owned by anyone, but they live close to humans and depend on their resources. For example, they scavenge for food or are fed by humans. In fact, although in Europe we think of dogs as owned pets, most of these animals in the world are village dogs ”, he tells SINC Rachel Daleco-author of this research at the VMU.
These dogs in the wild continue to experience the selective forces of domesticationTherefore, they offer valuable perspectives on the evolutionary impact on the behavior and cognition of dogs, according to this research.
Dale and his team’s goal was to explore the impact of the domestication process on behavior and cognition in dogs. “We did the experiment with 72 village dogs and 116 companion dogs. We recruit those who live in freedom on the street. Most of them were very friendly and we do not force them to participate in any case. We didn’t train them either, because the purpose of our experiment was to make inquiries without any type of specific training,” says the scientist.
In this way, they tried to explore the ability of village dogs to decipher subtle human communication signals, focusing specifically on facial expressions. To compare their results with those of domestic dogs, which have already shown signs of this social ability, they conducted a test that mimicked a real life scenario.
“Domestic dogs recognize human facial expressions. There are excellent studies carried out in controlled laboratories that confirm this. However, although the ones that live in the wild and the companions are the same species, the former have less experience with humans, so we could not assume that they have the same capacity, ”he argues.
A smile says very different things depending on the species
During the experiment, the researchers repeatedly displayed different facial expressions: neutral, happy and angryin the presence of food. Finally, they threw said food on the ground. The results revealed that both the village and domestic dogs were capable of distinguishing between subtle human communication signals. In particular, all showed a higher frequency of glaring, such as looking away, in response to the angry facial expression compared to the happy expression.
“The advantage of free-roaming dogs recognizing expressions is that they can use this information to decide whether to approach or avoid a human. If it shows hostility it could be dangerous, so this ability could be adaptive for them,” Dale explains.
However, the study did not yield any other data on significant behavioral effects, probably due to the low intensity of the expressions of emotion used. “There are different living beings that can identify human facial expressions, such as goats, cats and horses. In the case of domesticated species, this is a highly adaptive capacity, since these species must coexist with humans and, therefore, being able to differentiate them can help them predict what they will do next”, continues the researcher.
There are different living things that can identify human facial expressions, such as goats, cats and horses
Likewise, many animals can also recognize the emotions of their own species and this is very important for their sociability, in the same way that we use facial expressions to make ourselves understood with other human beings. However, recognizing the emotions of other species is much more difficult. “For example, a smile in humans is positive and indicates joy, but the same expression in dogs is sign of fear or aggression. That’s why it’s so iimpressive that they can recognize facial expressions of species so different from their own and it shows how adapted they are to living with us”, concludes the expert.
These findings have implications for various fields of biology, and the research team anticipates that they will contribute to our understanding of the intricate relationship between humans and dogs and, ultimately, improve our understanding animal cognition.
References Lazzaroni M, Schär J, Baxter E, Gratalon J, Range F, Marshall-Pescini S, Dale R. et al. “Village dogs match pet dogs in reading human facial expressions”. PeerJ (2023).
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