The behaviour of overweight dogs shows similarity with personality traits of overweight humans.

ABSTRACT: Excessive food intake and the resulting excess weight gain is a growing problem in human and canine populations. Dogs, due to their shared living environment with humans, may provide a beneficial model to study the causes and consequences of obesity. Here, we make use of two well-established research paradigms (two-way choice paradigm and cognitive bias test), previously applied with dogs, to investigate the role of obesity and obesity-prone breeds for food responsiveness. We found no evidence of breed differences in food responsiveness due to one breed being more prone to obesity than another. Breed differences found in this study, however, can be explained by working dog status, i.e. whether the dog works in cooperation with, or independently from, humans. Our results also confirm that o

SUBMITTER: Pogany A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6030291 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature