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Dogs and Fear: How our faithful friend smells the emotions!
Kleine Zeitung reports on a study that examines how dogs react to the smell of human fear and what factors play a role.
Dogs and Fear: How our faithful friend smells the emotions!
A current study by the “Domestication Lab” at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Comparative Behavioral Research (KLIVV) at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna shows that dogs have remarkable abilities to perceive human emotions. Small newspaper reports that the study was published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science and aimed to measure dogs' response to fear sweat without the fearful person being present.
Previous observations have already shown that dogs show avoidance behavior towards fearful smells. However, the results of this study were inconclusive: while some dogs reacted hesitantly in the presence of the odor by lowering their tails or taking longer to approach the samples, there were also dogs that approached the fear odor samples more quickly than the neutral ones. This suggests that there is no consistent pattern in the dogs' behavior.
Influences on dog behavior
How All around.dog Explained in detail, dogs are able to smell fear. This ability is based on the animals' highly developed olfactory abilities, which have around 220 million olfactory cells - compared to only 5 million in humans. When afraid, the human body releases chemical compounds such as adrenaline and cortisol that change body odor, which dogs can detect.
These impressive sensory abilities allow dogs to not only recognize human emotions, but also to interpret changes in the body language and behavior of those around them. Dogs respond to subtle physical signs of fear, such as increased heart rate or changes in breathing. Therapy and rescue dogs in particular are particularly adept at recognizing emotional states due to their specific training. Their reactions can range from comforting behavior to increased protective behavior.
Social cognition in dogs
Another aspect that influences dogs' behavior is their social cognition. A study by a team of researchers at the University of Vienna has shown that dogs and humans have been closely connected for at least 15,000 years and can also communicate non-verbally. Loud Research and knowledge Dogs recognize human facial expressions and can even identify faces of familiar people in photos.
Research into neural processing in the dog brain shows that specific brain regions are activated when dogs look at animate objects such as faces or bodies. These findings suggest that dogs process body language to interpret intentions and emotional states. In addition, when looking at images, not only areas for body perception are active, but also those for smell perception, which illustrates the connection between what is seen and what is smelled.
Overall, these studies show that dogs' behavior in response to fear odors and their ability to recognize emotions are complex and multifaceted. Further research is necessary to better understand this variability and to further deepen the human-dog relationship.