Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. If you're like me, you love dogs,
Speaker 1: possibly more than people. Some days, their warm eyes and
Speaker 1: doggie grins have me wrapped around their fluffy pupper tails,
Speaker 1: and according to new research from the University of Portsmouth's
Speaker 1: Dog Cognition Center, dogs deliberately make more facial expressions when
Speaker 1: we're watching them, and it could be their way to
Speaker 1: communicate with us. The study was led by Dr Julienne
Speaker 1: Kaminsky and published in a twenty seventeen issue of Scientific Reports.
Speaker 1: Kaminski and her research team came to their conclusion after
Speaker 1: watching twenty four different dogs, all family pets of varying
Speaker 1: breeds and ages. Each dog was filmed individually in a
Speaker 1: room with a person who went through various scenarios, including
Speaker 1: looking at the dog, looking away from the dog, and
Speaker 1: giving the dog food. The scientists then studied the dog's
Speaker 1: facial expressions using the Dog Facial Action Coding System or
Speaker 1: Dog FACTS, which is a scientific tool for coding canines
Speaker 1: facial movements. It was adapted from the FACTS system created
Speaker 1: for humans back in night. Kaminsky and her team discovered
Speaker 1: that each dog made animated faces when the person in
Speaker 1: the room was looking at it, including raising its eyebrows
Speaker 1: and sticking out its tongue a much more than when
Speaker 1: the person's back was turned. In a press statement, Dr
Speaker 1: Kaminsky said the findings appear to support evidence that dogs
Speaker 1: are sensitive to humans attention and that expressions are potentially
Speaker 1: active attempts to communicate, not simple emotional displays. Most surprisingly
Speaker 1: is that even the presence of food didn't influence the
Speaker 1: dogs as much as human affection. Kaminski said, we knew
Speaker 1: domestic dogs paid attention to how attentive a human is.
Speaker 1: In a previous study, we found, for example, the dogs
Speaker 1: stole food more often when the human's eyes were closed
Speaker 1: or when they had their back turned. In another study,
Speaker 1: we found dogs follow the gaze of a human if
Speaker 1: the human first establishes eye contact with the dog, so
Speaker 1: the dog knows that the gaze shift is erected at them.
Speaker 1: Kabinski says it's possible that the expressions of dogs have
Speaker 1: changed as they've become more domesticated, but the study does
Speaker 1: have its limits. Twenty four canines makes for a small
Speaker 1: study sample, so it's likely that more dogs should be
Speaker 1: studied to confirm these findings, which sounds like an excellent
Speaker 1: research session to me. Today's episode was written by Sarah
Speaker 1: Glime and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other tail wagging topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com