Mood readers: Dogs have
evolved to interpret human
moods
Posted on 10/30/2008 7:33:28 AM PDT by yankeedame
Mood readers: Dogs have
evolved to interpret human
moods
It will come as no surprise to dog lovers, but man's best friend is remarkably good at detecting our moods.
A study has shown that dogs look for signs of anger, irritation or happiness in faces in exactly the same way that people do.
Scientists believe dogs have evolved their 'face reading' skills over thousands of generations as a way of avoiding an unwelcome kick.
They say that dogs deal differently with human faces from any other image, and that their method of processing the information is the same as humans use....
...Moods such as anger, pleasure and fright are expressed far more clearly on the right side of our faces than on the left....
Happy days: Scientists say dogs can tell when people
are happy or angry
The researchers showed images of people, dogs, monkeys and inanimate objects...and filmed the animals' head and eye movements.
When the dogs looked at pictures of animals, their eyes flicked evenly across the image. But when they were presented with human faces they tended to gaze to the left, just as people do....
...A second study found that dogs have a much stronger bias to the left when looking at angry faces rather than happy or neutral ones.
The discovery suggests it is far more important for dogs to gauge a human's mood quickly and accurately...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Anybody knows this, dog owner or not. Once they’re past their required body functions, dogs and most animals run on almost pure emotion.
Cats? Different story. They have to screw with you. It’s in their DNA.
Cats?
They look at me with one thing in mind—DINNER! MEOW!
What we see: Dogs have an ability to read human moods.
Evidence that this is genetic and has evolved over thousands of generations: Zippo.
But the paradigm is that EVERYTHING is genetic and EVERYTHING has evolved over thousands of generations, and therefore EVERYTHING is evidence of evolution.
Bingo.
Credibility lost right there...
We use cats as dinner for our boxer.
Dogs have masters.
Cats have staff.....
My dogs will jump around if I am in a good mood. But if I go outside and I’m down about something, they’ll quietly come and sit next to me.
That’s why they are called “man’s best friend”.
They look at me with one thing in mind—DINNER! MEOW!
LOL! 99% of the time my cats look at me with only one thing in mind...
As a dog trainer, I believe this to be true: they certainly can read our faces. And if we try hard enough, we can read theirs, too.
I also believe that some of the more intelligent breeds — like German Shepherds — can be trained to understand English. Some of them even try to speak it, but their vocal chords can’t quite do it.
(”Greta”, my current prodigy, can even make a sound like “Mom” — she only says it when my wife is around, and even then only to her: never to me. It is too consistent to be a random noise: she is deliberately doing this, trying to talk. “Mom” is what I call my wife in front of the dogs. I talk to Greta in plain English all the time. Her commands are in German, but I seldom use those.)
I am also convinced that dogs can communicate on another level that we cannot detect easily, perhaps ESP. They almost certainly can read our minds.
Dogs are much, much more intelligent than most folk give them credit for. But like I always tell folks, if all you do is give your dogs terse commands, don’t be too surprised if that is all they respond to.
Cats are completely untrainable.
Now for the sad news (somewhat off-topic): I had to euthanize my old dog Rupert today. He’s buried in the Jungle, where he liked to romp around. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, by a long stretch. But a lovely dog, great with kids, a wonderful companion that we rescued from an abusive owner ten years ago.
Eleven hours have passed and I am still pretty cut up about it. Greta is also in mourning, as are my wife and kids.
Oh? The why can’t my boy read my face when he’s caught chewing on the vacuum! LOL.
> But the paradigm is that EVERYTHING is genetic and EVERYTHING has evolved over thousands of generations, and therefore EVERYTHING is evidence of evolution.
I believe in Creation AND I believe in Evolution. The two do not necessarily contradict.
Evolution tells us HOW God did things. Creation tells us why. Evolution is FACT. Creation is FACT. They reconcile beautifully.
I’m sorry for your loss.
A hundred years ago, there was the case of Clever Hans, the horse who demonstrated he could solve word problems by tapping out the answer with his hoof. He caused a sufficiently large sensation around Germany to attract the interest of science:
Using a substantial number of trials, Pfungst[investigator] found that the horse could get the correct answer even if von Osten[Hans's owner] himself did not ask the questions, ruling out the possibility of fraud. However, the horse got the right answer only when the questioner knew what the answer was, and the horse could see the questioner.He observed that when von Osten knew the answers to the questions, Hans got 89 percent of the answers correct, but when von Osten did not know the answers to the questions, Hans only answered six percent of the questions correctly.
Pfungst then proceeded to examine the behaviour of the questioner in detail, and showed that as the horse's taps approached the right answer, the questioner's posture and facial expression changed in ways that were consistent with an increase in tension, which was released when the horse made the final, "correct" tap. This provided a cue that the horse could use to tell it to stop tapping.
Thanks, mate!
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