Research on DA and "puppy eyes"
Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 5:26 pm
Hey guys, I was doing random research and found two really interesting articles on dog aggression (in general, not specifically dog-dog aggression) and "puppy eyes"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24972077 - Canine Aggression
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873274 - Paedomorphic (baby faced by sexually mature) facial expressions in dogs
Basically in the first study they found 5 causes for all major types of aggression (handler, stranger, child, and dog aggression): avoidance of adverse events, reaction to stimuli, sociability with humans, fear of sounds, and chase proneness. This was done on a study of 17 breeds and had 86,000-ish participants filling out a questionnaire based on the CBARQ. They actually were able to fairly directly correlate certain reactions with specific aggression types.
The other one looked at "baby faced" behaviors in dogs in shelters. They found that the "inner eyebrow raise" (or the sad puppy dog eyes) was actually a response from the dog seeking information form the humans. To humans, it looked like the human facial expression of sadness and makes them look younger, which meant they were something like 2x as likely to get adopted. So they thought that those really cute expressions your dog makes are really a process of behaviors evolved as an indirect consequence of domesticating the dog.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24972077 - Canine Aggression
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873274 - Paedomorphic (baby faced by sexually mature) facial expressions in dogs
Basically in the first study they found 5 causes for all major types of aggression (handler, stranger, child, and dog aggression): avoidance of adverse events, reaction to stimuli, sociability with humans, fear of sounds, and chase proneness. This was done on a study of 17 breeds and had 86,000-ish participants filling out a questionnaire based on the CBARQ. They actually were able to fairly directly correlate certain reactions with specific aggression types.
The other one looked at "baby faced" behaviors in dogs in shelters. They found that the "inner eyebrow raise" (or the sad puppy dog eyes) was actually a response from the dog seeking information form the humans. To humans, it looked like the human facial expression of sadness and makes them look younger, which meant they were something like 2x as likely to get adopted. So they thought that those really cute expressions your dog makes are really a process of behaviors evolved as an indirect consequence of domesticating the dog.