You know that feeling? Your dog feels it more than you expect.
A dog is supposedly man’s best friend. Scientists have just found more evidence to support this thesis. These animals are so empathetic that our state affects their behavior.
New research suggests that dogs experience emotional contagion from the scent of human stress. But not only do they sense our tension, but the awareness of this state influences decisions undertaken by our pets.
What did the research involve?
The study was conducted by scientists from the University of Bristol, and the results were published in the journal Scientific Reports. It is the first experiment of its kind to examine how the scents we emit during stressful situations affect the emotional state and decisions of dogs. Faced with such stimuli, animals are more likely to make more “pessimistic” choices.
The results are the fruit of an experiment conducted on 18 dog and owner pairs in a series of trials with different human odors. During the study, the dogs were first taught that depending on the location, the bowl may be empty or filled with food. The whole thing was a kind of line, where depending on the position, the chances of filling with food increased or decreased, depending on the position. Then they checked how fast the dog approached these places. A short response time indicated an optimistic approach, while a long response time indicated a pessimistic approach.
Stress is also a motivator for learning
The dogs repeated this test in three different situations – the first was no odor, the second was exposed to the odor associated with the sweat of a stressed person, and the third was the odor of a relaxed person. In the latter case the animals walked much slower towards the location close to the empty bowl. The smell apparently made them disbelieve the presence of food in the bowl if it was closer to the “empty” end of the line. Importantly, this effect was not found for the scent of a relaxed person.
But it seems there are some advantages to this situation. The team found that dogs exposed to the scent of a stressed human were able to learn more quickly where food was in those locations. Importantly, in both cases, the scent used during the tests also belonged to people unknown to the animals. As indicated by the Science Daily portal, referring to the statements of the authors of the study, understanding how human stress affects the well-being of dogs is an important aspect in the case of dogs kept in kennels and when training companion dogs and working dogs, such as assistance dogs.
