What is the dog growling about?

 Dogs live next to people for a very long time and understand us perfectly. How well have we learned to understand their language? Surely each of the owners of dogs at least once heard the growl of a pet. Can a person determine what a dog wants to say in this way? Scientists from the University of Budapest conducted a study to understand how well humans can interpret dog growls. And they published an article on this topic in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Researchers believe that the vocal expression of emotions obeys simple rules, and this applies not only to intraspecific communication, but also to interspecific ones. And people can use these rules to “decipher” the “speech” of other living beings. As for dogs, people distinguish between different types of barking well. With growling, things are more complicated – probably because it is considered a threat expression by default. The experiment consisted of having people listen to an audio recording of a dog’s growl, and checking how correctly they guessed what circumstances the dog’s reaction was associated with. most associated with aggression, although not always a threat. For example, dogs often growl when they play. The aim of the study was to understand how well people distinguish between different types of growls in certain situations: when a dog meets a stranger (human or dog), protects a bowl of food, or plays.Sometimes the dog growls during the game – and this does not mean at all that he is showing aggression The researchers played the audio recording in groups of “experimental” people or each individually and asked them to correlate the growl with the situation in which the dog found itself. In total, 40 people took part in the study, who listened to the growl of 18 dogs.

It turned out that in 63% of cases, people correctly correlated the growl with the situation in which the dog was. According to scientists, this is a good result.

It has also been found that women have a better understanding of dogs than men. Women correctly deciphered dog growls 65% of the time, while men only 45%. on time: 60% vs. 40%. The growl was the easiest to recognize when playing, but it was much more difficult to distinguish the protection of the bowl from the threat when meeting with another dog. Also, a person can roughly determine the size of a dog by hearing by growling. Moreover, the growling of small dogs was more often rated as less threatening and more playful. The study was published in its entirety in the journal Royal Society Open Science (2017). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.170134