A Comparison of Facial Color Pattern and Gazing Behavior in Canid Species Suggests Gaze Communication in Gray Wolves (Canis lupus)

Ueda, Sayoko; Kumagai, Gaku; Otaki, Yusuke; Yamaguchi, Shin’ya; Kohshima, Shiro

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098217

Cited by 29 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…It is easy to determine the direction of gaze of wolves that hunt cooperatively in packs because of the type of eyes they have. Furthermore, wolves have developed behaviors for receiving and sending their gaze signals (Ueda et al, 2014). These results suggest that wolves use gaze to communicate with others.…”

Section: Gaze Communication For Dogsmentioning

confidence: 88%

The Gaze Communications Between Dogs/Cats and Humans: Recent Research Review and Future Directions

et al. 2020

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Dogs (Canis familiaris) and cats (Felis silvestris catus) have been domesticated through different processes. Dogs were the first domesticated animals, cooperating with humans by hunting and guarding. In contrast, cats were domesticated as predators of rodents and lived near human habitations when humans began to settle and farm. Although the domestication of dogs followed a different path from that of cats, and they have ancestors of a different nature, both have been broadly integrated into—and profoundly impacted—human society. The coexistence between dogs/cats and humans is based on non-verbal communication. This review focuses on “gaze,” which is an important signal for humans and describes the communicative function of dogs’ and cats’ eye-gaze behavior with humans. We discuss how the function of the gaze goes beyond communication to mutual emotional connection, namely “bond” formation. Finally, we present a research approach to multimodal interactions between dogs/cats and humans that participate in communication and bond formation.

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Section: Gaze Communication For Dogsmentioning

confidence: 88%

The Gaze Communications Between Dogs/Cats and Humans: Recent Research Review and Future Directions

et al. 2020

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wolves, in comparison with other canids, are described as having an intense gaze-signaling face (27). Wolves have a lighter-colored iris compared with other canid species, which, as shown by Ueda et al (27), correlates with longer-duration facial gaze signals. While this might have formed a basis for human attention to the wolf eyes, selection for more exaggerated eyebrow movements could have been what created the illusion of human-like communication.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs

Kaminski

Waller

Diogo

et al. 2019

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Domestication shaped wolves into dogs and transformed both their behavior and their anatomy. Here we show that, in only 33,000 y, domestication transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans. Based on dissections of dog and wolf heads, we show that the levator anguli oculi medialis, a muscle responsible for raising the inner eyebrow intensely, is uniformly present in dogs but not in wolves. Behavioral data, collected from dogs and wolves, show that dogs produce the eyebrow movement significantly more often and with higher intensity than wolves do, with highest-intensity movements produced exclusively by dogs. Interestingly, this movement increases paedomorphism and resembles an expression that humans produce when sad, so its production in dogs may trigger a nurturing response in humans. We hypothesize that dogs with expressive eyebrows had a selection advantage and that “puppy dog eyes” are the result of selection based on humans’ preferences.

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“…Gaze-directed attention might even pre-date domestication: gaze following, both in distant space and around barriers, is present in the wolf, dogs’ closest relative (Range and Virányi 2011), and eye contact with a human experimenter can be trained, albeit with more effort than in the dog (Gácsi et al 2009a). The morphology of the head and eyes make them relevant cues for predicting conspecific behaviour (Ueda et al 2014), but in wolves eye contact is used mostly to signal threat (Schenkel 1967) suggesting that the eyes and gaze of conspecifics are aversive stimuli for canines in the wild.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex, skull length, breed, and age predict how dogs look at faces of humans and conspecifics

2018

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The gaze of other dogs and humans is informative for dogs, but it has not been explored which factors predict face-directed attention. We used image presentations of unfamiliar human and dog heads, facing the observer (portrait) or facing away (profile), and measured looking time responses. We expected dog portraits to be aversive, human portraits to attract interest, and tested dogs of different sex, skull length and breed function, which in previous work had predicted human-directed attention. Dog portraits attracted longer looking times than human profiles. Mesocephalic dogs looked at portraits longer than at profiles, independent of the species in the image. Overall, brachycephalic dogs and dogs of unspecified breed function (such as mixed breeds) displayed the longest looking times. Among the latter, females observed the images for longer than males, which is in line with human findings on sex differences in processing faces. In a subsequent experiment, we tested whether dog portraits functioned as threatening stimuli. We hypothesized that dogs will avoid food rewards or approach them more slowly in the presence of a dog portrait, but found no effect of image type. In general, older dogs took longer to approach food placed in front of the images and mesocephalic dogs were faster than dogs of other skull length types. The results suggest that short-headed dogs are more attentive to faces, while sex and breed function predict looking times through complex interactions.

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A Comparison of Facial Color Pattern and Gazing Behavior in Canid Species Suggests Gaze Communication in Gray Wolves (Canis lupus)

Cited by 29 publications

References 16 publications

The Gaze Communications Between Dogs/Cats and Humans: Recent Research Review and Future Directions

The Gaze Communications Between Dogs/Cats and Humans: Recent Research Review and Future Directions

Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs

Sex, skull length, breed, and age predict how dogs look at faces of humans and conspecifics

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