Mood readers: Dogs have
evolved to interpret human
moods
Posted on 10/30/2008 7:33:28 AM PDT by yankeedame
Mood readers: Dogs have
evolved to interpret human
moods
It will come as no surprise to dog lovers, but man's best friend is remarkably good at detecting our moods.
A study has shown that dogs look for signs of anger, irritation or happiness in faces in exactly the same way that people do.
Scientists believe dogs have evolved their 'face reading' skills over thousands of generations as a way of avoiding an unwelcome kick.
They say that dogs deal differently with human faces from any other image, and that their method of processing the information is the same as humans use....
...Moods such as anger, pleasure and fright are expressed far more clearly on the right side of our faces than on the left....
Happy days: Scientists say dogs can tell when people
are happy or angry
The researchers showed images of people, dogs, monkeys and inanimate objects...and filmed the animals' head and eye movements.
When the dogs looked at pictures of animals, their eyes flicked evenly across the image. But when they were presented with human faces they tended to gaze to the left, just as people do....
...A second study found that dogs have a much stronger bias to the left when looking at angry faces rather than happy or neutral ones.
The discovery suggests it is far more important for dogs to gauge a human's mood quickly and accurately...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I have dogs and cats. There is a distinct difference.
My dogs are big enough to kill me, but choose not to.
If my cats were the size of my dogs, they would undoubtedly kill me. (They already try, but they are just too little to finish the job).
I had trained (yeah right) my cat beautifully to come when I took a can of catfood and slapped it a few times against my palm. Seriously, I’ll bet there are many folks who can get their cats to come by shaking a bag of dry food. On the very few occasions when I let my cat out, that can-against-palm sound would get him into the kitchen in under a minute, no matter how far away he was. (They usually do not wander far) but when he heard that sound, we’re talking beeline, instant action.
My cat could count to three. He would eat exactly three french fries, no more, no less, then quit.
When we don’t know where one of the cats are, we will do a “cat count” by putting food in their bowl. Sometimes they come running if they hear any kind of grain going into a metal bowl, thinking it’s their food dish.
Absolutely. If you very consistently associate a sound with food throughout their life, you got ‘em!
(grin!) Well done!
Cats have always defied every effort I’ve made to train them in anything of use. Even responding to a call for chow. I would resile from calling cats stupid (they demonstrably aren’t, even tho’ I have in the past suggested that they are) — they just don’t like to be trained by me!
(If I were in a churlish mood, I might point out that your cat is responding out of informed self-interest whenever it is time for him to eat: he’s actually trained YOU to rattle the tin so that he knows when you are ready to feed him... but in fairness if you can get a cat to *do* anything at all, that’s a really great accomplishment!)
He does, but he knows you’ll let him get away with it!
“We use cats as dinner for our boxer.”
Chinese restaurant owners across America are saddened to hear of your competition for dinner material.
Actually the wonderful meal Peking Cat is not bad as long as they thoroughly defur it.
Where did the difference come from?
Mine can also - they each get three treats. If I try to shortchange them, I get "The Look" and they sit there until the third treat is delivered.
If only I could teach them the concept of "Saturday" (mommy and daddy don't have to get up at 4:30am!!!). To their credit, they do understand Sunday (the day after they get yelled at at 4:30am).
Oh, they have “the look” down as part of their initiation, LOL.
Of course all cats will try to wake you up by climbing on the bed, usually irritatingly near sunrise, way too early. After all, eating is the first order of business, by far. When my cat was young, he climbed up on my bed and started scratching at my eyelid. I got my hand underneath him and just fricking heaved him across the room quite forcefully. Huge clamor on the other side of the room, I think he ended up atop a partially open door, then fell, then landed on something else and fell off that. He NEVER did that again. After that, he would climb up on my bed all right, and meow with his mouth closed at a respectful distance. It was actually kind of cute. My friend had a cat who would climb up on his bed and gently bite his chin to wake him up for the am food call.
My sister-in-law had a cat which would wake her up by gently using her pads (not claws) to raise her eyelid and see if anyone was inside it.
Yeah, I can’t say that would make me happy. Those claws can come out at any time; you don’t know and probably don’t want to know what they been stepping in, but it IS, best case, the floor, probably some dirt-centric place like behind your washing machine ....and most people, even those perfectly fond of and not otherwise allergic to cats, will have some kind of eye reaction with cat dander in there. Not such a good situation.
Cats? Different story. They have to screw with you. It’s in their DNA.
Nah, once the cat’s symbiotic parasite works it’s way into
a human’s brain, it’s all snoogly woogie kitty wums, aren’t
they cute, they just shredded my Natuchi...
My point was that someone noticed something about dogs and said "They evolved that way" without actually having justification for saying that. This is the old "correlation does not equal causation" fallacy.
I've noticed that all of GMs cars have 4 wheels -- did they evovle that way?
I've noticed that dogs in my town go for walks with leashes -- did they evolve that way?
I just think it's possible to make observations without throwing in some gratuitous and unsubstantiated comment to the effect that "they evolved that way".
If that's what they believe, they should make some effort to show evidence of causation or a historical trail. But there are no fossils of human expressions and animal reactions to those expressions, so I see a paucity of evidence. Therefore, I think the observations can (and should) stand on their own.
RDO woof
Evolution through human selective pressure is the Scientifically accepted reason for the difference between dogs and wolves.
Do you have another explanation for the difference between dogs and wolves?
They're more complex than that. Mine? "Feed me" for sure. Then there's "Let me out to hunt" followed by "I brought you back a little something"; HEY "clean out my box dumbass", and "scratch my back".
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