Observing animals and humans: dogs target their gaze to the biological information in natural scenes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

This study examines how dogs observe images of natural scenes containing living creatures (wild animals, dogs and humans) recorded with eye gaze tracking. Because dogs have had limited exposure to wild animals in their lives, we also consider the natural novelty of the wild animal images for the dogs.

Methods

The eye gaze of dogs was recorded while they viewed natural images containing dogs, humans, and wild animals. Three categories of images were used: naturalistic landscape images containing single humans or animals, full body images containing a single human or an animal, and full body images containing a pair of humans or animals. The gazing behavior of two dog populations, family and kennel dogs, were compared.

Results

As a main effect, dogs gazed at

SUBMITTER: Tornqvist H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7749655 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature