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We should smile at our dogs - a new scientific study reveals why
BBC • • world
Key Points:
- Researchers at the University of Vienna used brain scans on 14 dogs to study their neural responses to human facial expressions, finding that happy faces activate the dogs' reward circuitry similarly to how pleasurable experiences do in humans.
- The study revealed that dogs can distinguish positive emotions like happiness from negative ones such as anger, fear, and sadness, but do not differentiate among the various negative emotions.
- This research highlights how domestication has shaped dogs' brains to develop social abilities that enable them to understand and cooperate with humans, despite their different evolutionary path from primates.
- The scientists, Laura Cuaya and Raúl Hernández-Pérez, who also own border collies involved in the research, aim for their findings to improve human-dog communication and deepen understanding of the unique human-canine relationship.
