Science has long known that pets, including dogs, can understand human emotions. For example, they sense anger or good spirits and can quickly detect a change in a person’s mood. Moreover, as studies have shown, all animals prefer to deal with people in a good mood. However, understanding the mood — this is not the same as being sympathetic. For example, animals like it when a person is in a good mood, not because it is transmitted to them, and they also become happy, but because such a person is less dangerous and may be more supportive of the animal. For example, a person in a good mood may give his pet a treat. However, sometimes dog owners note that their mood actually rubs off on their pets. Is this really so?
Contents
- 1 Dogs convey the mood of their owners
- 2 Animals determine the mood a person's voice
- 3 Dogs are more susceptible to people's moods than other animals
- 4 Why dogs understand people's emotions better than other animals
Dogs transmit the mood of their owners
When, for example, a dog owner is stressed, dogs feel it and themselves become stressed, and when a person is in a good mood, the dog can also become cheerful and playful. It can be assumed that dogs really are affected by a person’s mood, which means we can say that they sympathize with people.
This ability can be partly explained by the fact that dogs spend much more time with people than many other pets. They constantly see people, hear voices, etc. All this allows them to distinguish and more acutely perceive the emotions of the owner.
Dogs can pick up on their owner's mood. Photo source: dreamstime.com
To make sure whether this is really so or whether owners attribute abilities to their pets that they actually do not have, scientists conducted an experiment. They observed the dogs' behavior and compared it with other pets — mini pigs. These are dwarf, decorative pigs that are kept as ordinary pets.
Animals determine a person’s mood by their voice
People show their emotions in different ways – facial expressions, gestures, behavior and even their smell. However, it is unlikely that animals pay attention to all these nuances. The most obvious manifestation of emotions is vocalization, that is, the human voice. For example, it is known that babies distinguish the mood of their parents by their voice. Therefore, it is quite possible that animals, including dogs, also pay attention to the voice first.
Taking this into account, in order to find out how dogs and mini pigs share the mood with their owner, employees of the University of Budapest conducted an experiment in which they allowed the animals to listen to the voice of their owner. There were two audio recordings — one recorded loud crying, and the second — a quiet hum under one's breath, not expressing one's mood.
Dogs may understand a person’s mood by their voice. Photo source: wikipet.ru
In order for the results of the experiment to be accurate, it was carried out not in laboratory conditions, but at home in an environment familiar to each animal. There were also no strangers in the houses. The owners were simply asked to prepare audio recordings and give them to their pets to listen to. At the same time, the animals' reaction to the audio recording was recorded on video.
Dogs are more susceptible to people's moods than other animals
As researchers report in Animal Behaviour, when the animals heard their owner crying, they experienced stress, that is, both dogs and mini pigs showed anxiety, but the dogs reacted more acutely to this sound. If the pigs only twitched their ears when crying came from the speakers, then the dogs began to whine and howl.
The most interesting thing is that when the animals were turned on to a neutral, quiet moo under their breath, the picture was completely different. The dogs practically did not react to these sounds, but the mini-pigs fell into even greater stress than from crying. But what is the reason for this strange behavior of pigs?
Scientists compared dogs with decorative pigs. Photo source: organicfeeds.com
The study does not answer this question, but it can be assumed that this sound is simply poorly known to mini-pigs, they do not know what it means, so they are scared. But, be that as it may, the study confirmed that dogs are good at recognizing the mood of their owners by voice. Moreover, they seem to sympathize with negative emotions, or rather, they themselves begin to experience stress.
Why dogs understand people's emotions better than other animals
It is quite possible that dogs understand people's emotions well not only because they spend a lot of time with people. Artificial selection may play a certain role in this. People wanted dogs that performed the tasks assigned to them well. And for this they must understand a person and be trainable. Therefore, only those dog breeds were bred that met these requirements. As a result, dogs have even learned to understand human speech like small children.
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Mini pigs also spend a lot of time with people, but they were not required to have any special skills and abilities, so they were not subject to artificial selection. However, this does not mean that decorative pigs love their owners less. It’s just that the dogs with us, one might say, are “on the same wavelength.”