Dogs Understand Your Feelings
The animals’ intelligence is confirmed daily. Not only the pets we have at home, but also the wild species. In this article, we tell you about how they discovered that dogs are able to understand the feelings of people in general and their owners in particular.
Our dogs feel and understand feelings
This phrase is very common among dog owners. These beautiful four-legged beings who accompany us on a daily basis have many “shared” abilities with humans. Everyone who loves dogs knows that their pets notice when we are sad, upset, or happy.
Dogs know when to support and pet us and when to leave us alone and alone. What are they based on to make these decisions? According to the studies, they take into account our behaviors, our body language, the amount of pheromones our body “exhales”, and our vocal signals.
A group of scientists in Hungary recorded images of the brains of several dogs using MRI. They came to the conclusion that, when the animal heard its owner’s laugh or cry, its mind reacted in a different way, including, they themselves experienced feelings of joy or sadness at the same time.
The training and scanning sessions were carried out in 11 dogs. They were quiet for 8 minutes to be evaluated by the machine. Simultaneously, the brains of 22 people who heard the sounds of dogs, humans, environments, cars, etc. were observed.
Humans had stronger responses to other people’s sounds, while dogs reacted more intensely to other dogs’ sounds. The results were amazing. In both cases, the areas of the brain that lit up were similar.
The temporal pole, located in the anterior part of the temporal lobe, has the function of regulating emotions, language, hearing, memory and learning. This area is the one that is most activated in both people and dogs when they hear certain sounds.
Previous studies have shown that the mental age of a dog corresponds to that of a child of approximately 5 years of age. If a child of that age can know when his mother or siblings are sad, so can a dog, as this theory goes.
Your dog can understand how you feel
Another research, this time carried out at the University of Vienna and published in the journal Current Biology, claimed that dogs can distinguish a happy face from an upset one. The dog understands the signs that express both feelings.
The study authors indicate that this is the first evidence for the idea that animals differentiate the emotions experienced by other species. The dogs managed to pass this test, in which the orangutans, chimpanzees and gorillas, who have similar pasts with humans , failed.
Primates are able to recognize facial expressions, but only from their peers. This is very understandable, since it doesn’t interest any species to know what happens to the other… With the exception of dogs, which are very attached to humans.
The 10 dogs that participated in the experiment belonged to different breeds (border collie, terrier, golden retriever and German shepherd). They had to watch a screen where people were shown showing different feelings on their faces.
Apparently, they respond to an annoyed face as an intimidating stimulus. Also, they were more relaxed when they saw a smile or happy eyes. The theory behind this is that dogs memorize their owner’s expressions and associate them with a moment or situation.
For example, when something breaks. If its owner gets angry, this facial expression reminds him of something bad. But the opposite happens, if he plays with his owner and observes his expression of happiness, he will soon know when the person is happy.
