Dogs communicate with human using face and body language reduces stress or discomfort before they get worse makes them humans’ best friend but how they acquire this behaviour is still unclear.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Arizona discovers that puppies were born with human-like social skills allows them to communicate with humans from a very early age instead of learning later in life hints genetics play a large role in communication due to thousands of years of domesticating dogs to be our best pals.
They analysed 98 labrador retrievers, 23 golden retrievers and 254 labrador golden crosses from 117 litters originating from a similar rearing history and pedigree going back several generations.
Dr Bray, one of the lead researchers of the study said, “We show that puppies will reciprocate human social gaze and successfully use the information given by a human in a social context from a very young age and prior to extensive experience with humans. For example, even before puppies have left their littermates to live one-on-one with their volunteer raisers, most of them are able to find hidden food by following a human point to the indicated location.”
The study published in Current Biology shows that more than 40 percent of the variation shown in the puppies’ ability to follow someone’s finger and gaze at them when interacting with a human came down to genetics alone.
All these findings suggest dogs display human-like social skills have a strong genetic component are biologically prepared for communication with humans is an important part of the domestication process.
‘Puppies understand humans from the moment they are born.’
