3 minute read

The reason wh

conducted a study using photographs of -hu mans and their pups. He asked undergraduate students to match each person with their dog from the randomly ordered photographs. The results showed that the students correctly guessed the person and the pup by looking at the photos at a rate significantly higher than luck alone. Dr. Nakajima’s research, published in 2009, found that there really is truth to the idea that dogs resemble their owners. Next, Dr. Nakajima wanted to find out why dogs -lo oked like their owners. Which facial features did people use to correctly match dogs with their owners so accurately? In another study, he covered up different facial features in the photos, such as the mouth and the eyes, and asked students to match dogs and their -ow one of the first psychologists to put the idea to the test. Going to three nearby dog parks, he photographed the pooches and the owners separately, and then asked a group of participants to try to match them up. Despi te no additional cues, he found that they were able to work out who lived with whom with reasonable accuracy.” This work has since been repeated many -ti mes, notably by Dr. Sadahiko Nakajima at -Ja pan’sKwansei Gakuin University. Dr. Nakajima

According to the BBC, “Michael Roy at the University of California, San Diego was ners again. A s HuffPost explains: “ The particip ants were randomly assigned t o one of five different “ masking” photo conditions, pictured b elow: no-mask ( in which the human’s and the dog’s faces were unobstructed), eye-mask (the human’s eyes were blacked out), mouthmask (the human’s mouth was blacked out), dog-eye-mask (the dog’s eyes were blacked out), and eye-only (where just the eyes of the human and the dog could be seen).” The rate at which the students correctly matched the person with their dogs dropped significantly when the eyes in the photos were masked. This result supports the theory that the eyes are the most important feature connecting humans and our dogs. Dr. Nakajima’s work was published in the journal Anthrozoös in 2013.

Advertisement

According to the BBC, “Michael Roy at the University of California, San Diego was one of the first psychologists to put the idea to the test. Going to three nearby dog parks, he photographed the pooches and the owners separately, and then asked a group of participants to try to match them up. Despite no additional cues, he found that they were able to work out who lived with whom with reasonable accuracy.” This work has since been canklrepeated many times, notably by Dr. Sadahiko Nakajima at Japan’sKwansei Gakuin University. Dr. Nakajima conducted a study using photographs of humans and their pups. He asked undergraduate students to match each person with their dog from the randomly ordered photographs. The results showed that the students correctly guessed the person and the pup by looking at the photos at a rate significantly higher than luck alone. Dr. Nakajima’s research, published in 2009, found that there really is truth to the idea that dogs resemble their owners. Next, Dr. Nakajima wanted to find out why dogs looked like their owners. Which facial features did people use to correctly match dogs with their owners so accurately? In another study, he covered up different facial features in the photos, such as the mouth and the eyes, and asked students to match dogs and their owners again. As HuffPost explains: “The participants were randomly assigned to one of five different “masking” photo conditions, pictured below: no-mask (in which the human’s and the dog’s faces were unobstructed), eye-mask (the human’s eyes were blacked out), mouth-mask (the human’s mouth was blacked out), dog-eye-mask (the dog’s eyes were blacked out), and eye-only (where just the eyes of the human and the dog could be seen).” The rate at which the students correctly matched the person with their dogs dropped significantly when the eyes in the photos were masked. This result supports the theory that the eyes are the most important feature connecting humans and our dogs. Dr. Nakajima’s work was published in the journal Anthrozoös in 2013.

The analysis of ancient and from all over Eurasia reconstructs the long common history se animals with humans, about 11,000 years ago, and how the habits, activities grations of humans popula the past influenced the ge our best friends. Dogs were animals to be domesticated mans and, for at least the last years, their genes have chan adapt to living together with