Many dog owners care for their good dogs in the same way they would a small human child. But a number of recent studies have revealed that dogs don’t understand speech and perceive faces the same way that people do.
While owners who adore their pets may find this sad, it provides researchers with a better understanding of how dogs think and may result in better training.
These are creatures that regularly reside with us, M The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s Leanne Lilly, an assistant clinical professor who was not involved in the study, told TODAY Understanding how they respond to that environment will undoubtedly improve how we interact with them. ”.
In two of the series’ studies, researchers used fMRI, a type of brain scan that measures blood flow to the brain to track cerebral activity, to examine how canines comprehend human faces and speech. To be able to remain still during imaging, all of the study dogs underwent special training.
Two dog groups—one with 13 dogs and the other with 11 dogs—viewed photographs of people’s faces as part of the study on canines that can recognize human faces. The study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, compared regular photos with and without human facial features. The researchers wondered if dogs recognized people primarily by their noses, eyes, and mouths, similar to how primates do. However, dogs struggled to distinguish between the two, indicating that they do not read faces the same way that people do.
According to Dóra Szabó, a graduate student in the ethology department at Eötvös University in Hungary, “the dog brain may not have the same tools to process the inner parts of the face (only eyes, nose, and mouth),” she told TODAY via email. The results are consistent with earlier behavioral studies, which also stated that without special training, dogs cannot identify their owners from their inner faces. ”.
Dog owners who are certain their puppies recognize them may be devastated by this news, but according to Szabó, this doesn’t mean that man’s best friend doesn’t know anything about his people.
Dogs are doing fine with reading people’s faces, she said, they just might not be using the same mechanisms or brain regions as people. “Plus, we typically don’t just show our emotions on our inner faces; we also talk, move, and perspire.” ”.
Lilly points out that since the dogs were viewing images rather than human faces, the findings reveal how dogs react to photographs.
Dogs probably don’t recognize images of us the same way that we do, which means that it probably doesn’t have a significant impact on them, she explained. “I don’t believe it will significantly alter how we interact with our dogs,” ”.
Another study examined how canines interpret human speech and was published in the journal Scientific Reports. By having 12 dogs listen to people speak real or made-up words, researchers looked at how well the canines understood who was speaking. Dogs can distinguish between different talkers even though they use different brain regions than humans do.
A post-doctoral researcher at the neuroethology communication lab at Eötvös University in Hungary, Marianna Boros, told TODAY via email, “Dogs live in an environment that is rich in speech and we communicate with them by talking to them. Therefore, it’s crucial to comprehend what speech components they can understand. “.
Dog owners can better train their pets by being aware of the fact that dogs pay more attention to the person speaking than the specific speech sounds they make.
Knowing how dogs react to people in real-time serves another crucial purpose. These studies’ findings may also aid in the understanding of illnesses that affect both humans and dogs, like dementia.
“It’s important if we can learn things from dogs that improve both dog and human life,” Lilly said. “Knowing how the dog’s brain functions makes sense in that regard.” “.
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The Kin Consideration
For dogs, seeing and recognizing familiar faces is a subset of the larger kin and mate selection process. In effect, dogs become familiar with their “pack” — human or otherwise — by creating a mental map of key physical characteristics that include “non-facial bodily cues, acoustic or chemical signs,” according to Attila Andics, co-author of the recent study from the Society of Neuroscience.
Dogs are perfectly capable of recognizing human faces, according to research by Andics and his associates, but this knowledge isn’t their top priority. The research team used fMRI scans to find that dogs’ mental activity was the same whether they were looking at human faces or the backs of human heads. This indicates that dogs’ brains don’t have the same sophisticated face recognition abilities as those of humans and other primates. Dogs did exhibit species preferences through increased brain activity when viewing images of other dogs compared to humans, but they do not share the same facial structure as humans.
Not that your dog enjoys looking into your eyes or enjoying your face, mind you. Andics writes, “It is amazing that dogs excel at eye contact, following gaze, reading emotions from our face, and they can even recognize their owner by the face, despite seemingly lacking a specialized neural machinery to process faces. In fact, research indicates that dogs can distinguish between happy and angry human faces and are capable of recognizing the human smile as a positive social cue in human/canine interactions. The smile is frequently a sign of aggression in other species. In other words, as a member of people-focused packs, dogs have evolved the capacity to recognize and respond to human faces and emotions.
Researchers finds dogs’ brains don’t respond any differently to faces than to the backs of heads
According to a recent study, dogs aren’t biologically tuned in to faces the same way that humans are, but they still make an effort to read our expressions.
Dogs are simply not wired to respond to faces, according to research from Hungary. Their brains do not react to seeing images or videos of faces in the same way that a human brain does.
In actuality, it is irrelevant to a dog’s brain whether they are staring us in the back of the head or dead in the eyes.
According to the study’s lead author Attila Andics, “I wouldn’t say that dogs [are] not interested in our face,” As It Happens host Carol Off said. “All we’re saying is that they don’t react to faces more strongly than they do to other types of stimuli. “.
The study was published Monday in the Journal of Neuroscience.
FAQ
Can dogs recognize their owners?
According to a recent study, dogs can identify their owners just by their voice. According to a recent study, your dog may not even require their vision or smell to guide them. You may already be certain that they can recognize you by voice.
Do dogs remember people faces?
According to the study’s findings, dogs that live with families respond more readily to human faces and pay closer attention to familiar faces as opposed to those they are unfamiliar with. This research revealed that dogs are able to recognize faces. It seems unnecessary to be concerned that your dog will forget you.
Do dogs recognize a human smile?
The majority of pet owners agree that our dogs can read our facial expressions. A dog’s tail will wag when you smile, and it will frown when something is wrong.
What do dogs think when people talk?
Talking to their adult dogs like puppies is common. We frequently speak to our dogs in nearly the same slow, high-pitched voice as we do to our babies, and we often say the same sweet, absurd things. Scientists have now demonstrated that while older dogs are somewhat indifferent to our pooch-directed speech, puppies find it exciting.