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

ABSTRACT: 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. A

SUBMITTER: Bognar Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6112419 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature