Animal Sentience

We all know that some people have a positive ‘glass-half-full’ attitude to life, whereas others are more pessimistic, and now research suggests that the same could be true for dogs. 

Professor Mike Mendl, Head of the Animal Welfare and Behaviour research group at Bristol University, who led the research, said: “We all have a tendency to think that our pets and other animals experience emotions similar to our own, but we have no way of knowing directly because emotions are essentially private”.  However, his research team was able to develop a new method to study ‘pessimistic’ or ‘optimistic’ decisions in dogs.

Dogs, like humans, can tend to optimism or pessimism

Separation-related behaviour and anxiety
Around half of all pet dogs in the UK will, at some stage of their lives, show separation-related behaviour (SRB) when left alone.  SRB can include vocalisation, destructiveness and inappropriate toileting.  Many pets are given up for re-homing for performing these undesirable behaviours; however, it is believed that dogs show SRB because they are experiencing feelings of anxiety.  The research found that dogs who display high levels of separation-related behaviour also appear to have a more negative underlying mood (affective state) when they are not separated from their owners.

The research
Twenty-four dogs from two UK re-homing centres were used in the study.  Firstly, each dog took part in a separation-related behaviour test which was designed to measure his or her response to being left alone.  The dogs were taken to a room for 20 minutes where they could interact with one of the researchers.  The next day they were taken back to the same room but this time the researcher only interacted with the dog for a few minutes, then left the room.  The researchers used video recordings to give each dog a SRB score based on how he or she behaved when alone in the room.

For the second test, the dogs were trained that when a bowl was placed one side of the room (the ‘positive’ position) it would contain a small amount of food, but when placed on the other side (the ‘negative’ position) it would be empty. The bowl was then placed at different locations between the positive and negative positions. Dogs who ran quickly to these ambiguous locations, as if expecting the positive food reward were said to have made an ‘optimistic’ judgement, and others who moved more slowly and were said to have made a ‘pessimistic’ judgement. The dogs who behaved more pessimistically tended to be the ones who also showed higher levels of SRB when left alone for a short time. But should we be surprised by this?

Emotional states influence how dogs approach a situation
Professor Mike Mendl said “We know that people’s emotional states affect their judgements and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs – that a ‘glass-half-full’ dog is less likely to be anxious when left alone than one with a more ‘pessimistic’ nature.”

This study provides an important insight into dogs’ emotions and suggests that at least some dogs who show separation-related behaviour may have underlying negative emotional states.  Owners should be encouraged to seek treatment for these dogs to enhance their welfare rather than give them up for re-homing.

Sources:

Mendl, M., Brooks, J., Basse, C., Burman, O., Paul, E., Blackwell, E. and Casey, R. (2010). Dogs showing separation-related behaviour exhibit a pessimistic cognitive bias.  Current Biology 20, 19: 39-40.

e! Science News (2010). Dogs may be pessimistic too [Accessed 19 October 2010].