Good morning, here’s Dr. Karl.
Dogs have been around humans for at least 15,000 years. But we still haven’t solved the answers to the two big questions: do dogs really love us and why do they sometimes bow their heads in such an adorable and ridiculously friendly way?
Dogs evolved from wolves. But if you compare a dog and a wolf that have been bred in close contact with humans, there are big differences. First, if you offer food to both of them, the dog will come looking for food and then stay to hug and keep company. But a wolf will take the food and then take it.
Second, suppose you do an experiment in which the human caregiver appears to be trapped inside a box — they are not really trapped — the dog will offer support and show signs of distress at the plight of the poor human, but the wolf only it does. do not care.
Part of the difference appears to be related to two genes called GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, and these genes are known to have powerful effects on sociability in mammals, including humans. Modern wolves do not usually have mutations in these genes. But dogs can have up to six mutations, and the more mutations they have, the more they love humans.
The current thinking is that in time, a few wolves with one or two mutations approached humans to keep company. And that became a beautiful relationship where dogs and humans spend a lot of time. Today, dogs and humans work and play together: companionship, police work, helping people with disabilities, protecting humans, dragging loads, and hunting.
And when a dog and its human guardian look at each other affectionately, their hormones respond. Their oxytocin levels increase, and this is associated with love and bonding.
So who even knows what love really is, but it seems like what a dog feels for its owner is pretty close.
So this is Love 101, so now let’s see why some dogs tilt their heads. Stanley Coren, the author of many books on dogs, explored it.
One suggestion was that the dog wanted to point one of his ears at his owner, so he could hear them better. But mostly the dogs ’ears didn’t even point to the owner.
Another hypothesis was that the bow of the head was simply the dog letting the owner know that he was paying attention to them.
Another possibility raised by Stanley Coren was that the dogs’ long snout, or snout, could block vision from the owner’s mouth, and perhaps simply tilting his head pulled out his long snout. Check it out. Make a fist and bring it up to your nose. Now, look at another human being and you will notice that you cannot clearly see his mouth, which is where the words come from, but also the center of most human facial expressions. But when you tilt your head you can now see his mouth. Maybe this is happening to the dog, but we don’t know for sure.
A more recent study looked at 40 dogs and their ability to understand the words that describe their toys. After an initial training period of three months, where they were taught the names of their different toys, the dogs were tested. The owner and the dog went to one room, while the toys stayed in another room. The owner would then ask the dog to get the specific toy they named.
Now, about 33 of the dogs were desperate enough to get some of the so-called toys. But seven of the dogs were very good. They could bring 10 or more toys. Now, initially, the seven dogs could carry the correct toy 86% of the time, which dropped to 61% a month later, and 57% a month later. This is pretty impressive. In fact, one of the dogs could carry the correct toy 54 times out of 59 tests.
Now here’s the weird thing. Upon hearing the owner’s instructions, gifted dogs tilted their head to one side 43% of the time, while normal dogs that could not carry the toy did so only 2% of the time. And gifted dogs had a preferred direction of inclination, such as to the left or right, with which they clung.
At this stage we still don’t really understand what happens to the tilt of the head. Maybe the dogs are tilting their heads, knowing they look very cute, to make us love as much as they love us. Or maybe I’m just barking at the wrong tree …