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Dog presented with series of facial expressions on screen
- Published_at:2015-02-12
- Category:Pets & Animals
- Channel:Shazzy Mazzy MA1
- tags:
- description: Research has found that dogs can distinguise between human feleings. The canines were presented with a series of facial expressions on a touch screen. Dogs can tell what you are FEELING: Man's best friend can read emotions that are written on our faces, study finds Scientists found dogs could discriminate between happy and angry faces The animals were able to tell a human smile carried positive meanings They also saw that angry faces were negative even in pictures of strangers It could help to explain the 'extraordinary bond' between humans and dogs They have been man’s best friend since the Stone Age - and scientists now think they know why. Dogs have a remarkable ability to read our emotions, according to new research. Animal behaviour specialists have produced the first evidence that any animal can discriminate between emotional expressions in another species. The findings, published in the respected academic journal Current Biology last night, help explain the ‘extraordinary bond’ between humans and dogs, the scientists say. The team, from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, demonstrated in a series of tests that dogs could accurately tell the difference between pictures of a happy and angry faces. Research author Ludwig Huber said: ‘Our study demonstrates that dogs can distinguish angry and happy expressions in humans, they can tell that these two expressions have different meanings, and they can do this not only for people they know well, but even for faces they have never seen before. ‘It appears likely to us that the dogs associate a smiling face with a positive meaning and an angry facial expression with a negative meaning.’ Even when the scientists tried to train dogs to choose a picture of an angry face - by tempting them with treats - the dogs were reluctant to do so. Co-author Corsin Müller added: ‘We think the dogs in our study could have solved the task only by applying their knowledge of emotional expressions in humans to the unfamiliar pictures we presented to them. ‘We expect to gain important insights into the extraordinary bond between humans and one of their favourite pets, and into the emotional lives of animals in general.’ The team put 24 dogs through a series of behaviour experiments, presenting them with a series of pairs of faces on a touch screen. The scientists separated the dogs into two groups - one group was rewarded in the tests for repeatedly choosing happy faces, and the other for selecting angry faces. The results showed that the dogs - mostly border collies and German shepherds - were consistently able to recognise and select one type of expression over the other. And crucially, those dogs which were tasked with picking out the smiling faces performed better, suggesting that the animals had already learned to beware angry expressions. The findings show that not only could the dogs learn to identify facial expressions, but they were also able to transfer what they learned in training to new cues. The study builds on a growing scientific understanding of the links between man and dog. Scientists at Sussex University revealed in November that they process language in a very similar way to humans. That research suggested that dogs are able to pick out the consonants and vowels of human speech, but also the more subtle aspects of human communication - the emotional tone, intonation and volume changes that influence the meaning of language. And another team of scientists from the University of Abertay, Dundee, reported last year that even untrained dogs are able to understand human commands, suggesting the bond is innate - it does not depend upon training. Experts think that these different studies provide evidence that dogs have gradually evolved over 30,000 years to understand humans. The first wolves tamed by humans 30,000 years ago were hunting animals. But over time they have become working dogs, farming assistants and, increasingly, emotional companions. Selective breeding has meant that dogs which could communicate better with their owners were preferred, encouraging the trait to become more pronounced over time.
| ranked in date | views | likes | Comments | ranked in country (#position) |
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| 2015-02-18 | 11,867 | 12 | 1 |
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| 2015-02-19 | 17,865 | 16 | 2 |
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| 2015-02-20 | 19,066 | 16 | 2 |
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