When You Are Generous, Your Dog Is Watching You

Some people have generous natures, and some people are miserly. The generous ones are happy to share what they have with others, while the miserly folks resent having to share anything with anybody.

So if given the choice, which type of person would a dog likely approach first?

If you guessed the generous one, you guessed right.

But how do dogs know this? A recent study in the journal Animal Behaviour reported on experiments where dogs were given the opportunity to interact with generous vs. non-generous people, and the study examined the cues that the dogs used to make a decision about whom to interact with (Marshall-Pescini et al. 2011. Social eavesdropping in the domestic dog. Animal Behaviour (2011), doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.02.029).

The study used 100 dogs of mixed breeds and ages. In the experimental setup, a dog and the dog’s person were allowed to go into a small room, and the dog was given the opportunity to explore the room. Then the dog and person sat down along one side of the room while two people unfamiliar to the dog entered the room. Each of these two people had a bowl of cereal and a bowl of sausages, and each came up to the seated dog and allowed the dog to smell both bowls. Then the two people sat down facing each other, and started to eat small quantities of cereal.

A third person entered the room, came up to each of the two people facing one another, and begged for food. One of the two people, the generous one, let the person have a morsel of cereal, saying “Have it.” and placed a bit of food in the beggar’s mouth.  The other person, the non-generous one, told the person “No” and made a gesture as if pushing the beggar away. The beggar moved from one person to the next six times, each time either getting a morsel of food from the generous person or being told “No” by the non-generous one.

Following these interactions, the beggar left and the dog was allowed to roam around the room for 20 seconds, during which time the experimenters monitored who the dog interacted with the most: the generous person, the non-generous one, or neither.

The end result was that most dogs spent more of their time either looking at or interacting with the generous person while mostly ignoring the non-generous one.

The experimenters tweaked these experiments to see if just voice alone (without the gestures) was enough, or if just the gestures (without the voice) made a difference, or even if the dogs would respond if people made the gestures and said the words but no beggar was present.

The dogs did best when voice was combined with gestures, although they also did well with just the voice alone. They did not seem to recognize what was happening when just the gestures were used (putting food in the beggar’s mouth vs pushing beggar away), perhaps because these gestures were relatively similar.

When no beggar was present, the dogs did not distinguish between the generous and non-generous person, indicating that they were watching what happened to the beggar rather than just tuning in to the voice and the gestures.

Those of us who have trained dogs know that we can get a dog’s attention by sharing food with the dog. But this study puts a novel twist on food sharing: Dogs can assess who shares food with other people, and look to that person as a likely candidate for sharing food with the dog.

So the next time you have people over for a dinner party, be sure to be generous in handing out food.

You need to impress your dog with your generosity.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

Comments

[orlando psychic helen]

positive energy about this blog

[K9 Cruiser]

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

[shock collars for dogs]

Never severely punish your canine for their aggressive behavior. Punishment causes the canine to concern you and may be seen as a problem to their dominance. This can actually enhance their aggressiveness. As a substitute, study training strategies that emphasize optimistic reinforcement and rewards for good behavior.

[dog training collars]

If your dog is biting out of aggression, he is showing you that he is the top dog. This can be a very risky situation if it is not controlled immediately. The best way to handle dominant, aggressive behavior is steady, regular obedience work, which will stress your authority over your dog. It only take two fifteen-minute sessions a day to make it clear to your dog that you are the boss, and that it is rewarding to do what you say. You can make this fact clear to him by rewarding him (with treats and generous praise) for obeying a command, and isolating him (putting him in "time-out", either outside the house or in a room by himself) for misbehavior.

[Sasha]

I think that the interaction between the dog and the people are based on both food and generosity. In this situation food is present and dogs are very focused on food. They will go where ever they think the food is. But, if they were to do this experiment again replacing the food with something else, the dog would still respond the same way. I think that dogs would most likely go to the generous person. Dogs recognize generosity, therefore they would make the decision to only interact with the person that is generous.

[Moo Kahn]

Well as much as I'd like to think my dogs are higher-thinking and altruistic, couldn't it just be that the dogs were going with the human who had already exhibited they would be a more reliable source of food?

Person #2 - who didn't give up any food would be a poor choice if you were a dog. It's not about "generosity" - it's about an animal based on a wolf going where the food is most likely to be. In my experience dogs aren't very complicated. They like food - the go where the food is a better bet.