That dogs have different facial expressions , everybody knows. Less clearly was the function of those facial expressions. Were they the result of excitement? Or did the dogs really communicate with their facial expressions? In the research journal Scientific Reports, scientists now come with the intriguing answer.
What did they do?
The researchers studied 24 dogs of different races and ages. The dogs were on the line, one meter away from a person. Sometimes the dog lay within the field of vision of that person, sometimes the person was distracted or sat down with the back to the dog. With cameras, the faces of the dogs were continuously filmed.
What did they find? The results
The research shows that dogs generate more facial expressions when people look at them. According to the researchers, it is convincing evidence that dogs move their faces in response to human attention. The fact that dogs produce much less facial expressions when they see something nice is additional evidence that dogs generate facial expressions to communicate and not just because they are excited. The results endorse the evidence that dogs are sensitive to human attention and that facial expressions may be active communication attempts and not simply expressions of emotion, according to researcher Juliane Kaminski.
Two Main Findings
The study has two main findings. First, human attentional state affected the production of dogs’ facial expressions. Dogs produced significantly more facial expressions when the human was oriented towards them, than when the human had her back turned to the dog. Human attentional state also affected one of the dogs other behaviours, the frequency of vocalizations produced. The visibility of the food, however, did not affect dogs’ facial movements and there is also no conclusive evidence that it affected any of the dogs other behaviours. So, while dogs produce more facial expressions when the human is oriented towards them and in a position to communicate, the visibility of non-social but arousing stimulus (the food) did not alter their facial movements in the same way.
Graph showing the effect of attention from humans to the expression of the dogs
Be aware of the large statistical error, though!
Puppy eyes
Dogs can generate different facial expressions, but they have - at least during this research - clearly a favorite. And that's what researchers call 'puppy eyes'. The eyebrows are pulled up, making the eyes look bigger and more childlike. This is also the facial expression that people are particularly susceptible to.
Although research increases our knowledge about the dog and its relationship with humans, many questions remain.
What do you think?
References:
Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 12914 (2017)