Once upon a time, scientists who studied animals didn't believe that
animals could feel love. They thought it was putting emotion over
science.
However, a new book says that the word is necessary to understand what has
made the bond between humans and our best friends one of the most important
partnerships between animals in history.
This is what Clive Wynne, who started the Canine Science Collaboratory at
Arizona State University, says in "Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves
You."
The animal psychologist, who is 59 years old, started studying dogs in the
early 2000s. Like many of his peers, he thought that giving dogs complicated
feelings was the sin of anthropomorphism, but body language was starting to
show him otherwise.
A British man told AFP, "I think there comes a time when it's worth being
skeptical of your own skepticism."
In the last twenty years, there has been a rise in dog science, with a lot
of articles praising how smart dogs are.
Brian Hare's books like "The Genius of Dogs" have helped spread the idea
that dogs are naturally very smart.
However, Wynne ruins the fun by saying that Fido isn't that smart.
Pigeons can tell the difference between different types of objects in 2D
pictures, dolphins have shown they can understand language, and honeybees
use dance to tell each other where food sources are. These are all things
that dogs have never been able to do.
Wolves, which are related to dogs but are usually mean and not interested
in people, have been shown to be able to read human cues, such as by playing
fetch in a recent Swedish study.
Wynne suggests a paradigm change by putting together studies from different
fields to say that what makes dogs unique is their "hypersociability" or
"extreme gregariousness."
Gene for Williams syndrome
One of the most important improvements is research into oxytocin, a
chemical in the brain that makes emotional bonds stronger between people.
New data suggests that oxytocin is also responsible for relationships
between dogs and people.
New study led by Takefumi Kikusui at Azabu University in Japan has shown
that the chemical levels rise when people and their dogs look into each
other's eyes, which is similar to what happens when mothers and babies look
into each other's eyes.
In 2009, Bridgett vonHoldt, a geneticist at UCLA, made an interesting
discovery: dogs have a mutation in the gene that causes Williams syndrome in
people. People with this disease are intellectually limited and very
friendly.
"The essential thing about dogs, as for people with Williams syndrome, is a
desire to form close connections, to have warm personal relationships—to
love and be loved," says Wynne.
New behavior tests have also given us a lot of information. Many of them
were created by Wynne himself and are easy to do at home with treats and
cups.
One experiment had researchers use a rope to open a dog's front door and
place a bowl of food at the same distance from the dog's owner. The dogs
almost always went to their owner first.
Scientists have used magnetic resonance imaging to find out that dogs'
brains respond just as much to praise as they do to food, if not more
so.
But while dogs naturally want to be loved, it takes loving care early in
life for this to happen.
The love connection isn't just between people either: In an experiment that
became the base for a 2015 movie, a farmer raised pups among a group of
penguins on a small Australian island. The farmer was able to protect the
birds from foxes that were trying to mate with them.
Love is all you need.
Wynne thinks that genetics may be the next big thing in dog science because
it will help him figure out how dogs were domesticated at least 14,000 years
ago.
Wynne supports the trash heap theory, which says that the ancestors of
modern dogs hung out near places where people dumped their trash, getting to
know people slowly before they formed the lasting bond we know today through
joint hunting trips.
People often think that hunters caught wolf pups and then taught them, but
Wynne says that's a "completely unsupportable point of view" because grown
wolves are dangerous and would attack humans.
Scientists can now find out when the important change to the gene that
controls Williams syndrome happened thanks to new methods for reading DNA
from very long ago.
Wynne thinks this happened between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, near the end
of the last ice age, when people started riding dogs on regular hunts.
He says that these results are important for dogs' health, not just because
they advance science.
That means not using harsh, painful training tools like choke collars based
on false ideas about "dominance" spread by famous dog trainers who tell dog
owners they need to be "pack leaders."
"All your dog wants is for you to show them the way," Wynne says. "You can
do this by being a compassionate leader and giving them treats."
It also means making time for them to meet other people's needs instead of
leaving them alone all day.
"Our dogs give us so much, and in return they don't ask for much," he
shares.
"You don't have to buy all of these fancy, expensive toys, treats, and who
knows what else that are out there."
"They just need our company, they need to be with people."
