Signs a Dog Senses You’re Crying
Have you ever noticed your dog knows just what do to when you are crying? Those signs you see exhibited in your dog, are probably the same common signs seen in all dogs when they witness a human in teary distress. For example, the most common sign you will see when a dog senses that you are crying is that your dog approaches you in what appears to be a comforting, but submissive manner (e.g., head bowed).
Many dogs will also begin to nuzzle or nudge the crying person, or they may lay their head on the persons lap. Less showy dogs may simply sit or lay down at the distressed persons side.
Dogs are also known to mimic emotions in humans, so your pooch might begin to whimper or cry if they see and hear you doing so. Their eyes may be wide, and it is likely that their ears are down.
These are some signs you may notice if your dog is sensing that you are crying:
Some other signs to watch for include:
Even though it has been proven that dogs can and do respond to crying, science and philosophy have not always supported this notion. In fact, it was not until recent scientific research, with a focus on behavioral psychology in animals, that this ability was recognized and validated. Before that time, however, our understanding of our dear animal friends was far less.
As early as the 1600s, the time of the French philosopher Renee Descartes, dogs have been misunderstood and underestimated. According to Descartes, it is the soul that gives humans consciousness, which is defined as the state of being aware of ones surroundings.
Unfortunately, Descartes believed that dogs, like all animals, had no soul, but were machine-like and therefore unable to have conscious thoughts, feelings, or understandings. If you have a dog, you are most likely shocked by this idea that your beloved animal is unaware of you and its surroundings, as you know how responsive, caring and loving they can be to your every need.
Thanks to science though, we now know Descartes could not have been more wrong.
The researchers found that dogs didnt open the door more often when their owners cried than when they hummed. “Dogs want to be with their owners, so even in our condition where the dogs were exposed to humming, they still about half the time went to their owners,” said senior study author Julia Meyers-Manor, an assistant professor of psychology at Ripon College.
The final part of the study was a challenge called “impossible task,” which measures the strength of a dogs bond with its owner. In this task, the dogs were shown into a room where their owner and a stranger stood on opposite sides of a testing apparatus. Both the owners and the strangers stood still and stared diagonally across the room; they didnt make eye contact with the dog. The dogs were taught to move a jar on the apparatus in order to retrieve food underneath it. After a couple of trials, the jar was then screwed onto its lid, so that the dogs couldnt retrieve the food.
“It seems like the dogs [who didnt go through the door] would get more and more stressed by the crying but that they then sort of became paralyzed and [were] not able to do anything,” Meyers-Manor told Live Science. But she noted that the scientists saw a huge range of behaviors, including other dogs who were indifferent to their owners cries.
The researchers noted that they found some variability in the heart rate of the stressed dogs as well, but this data was a bit more difficult to interpret, as you typically need about 2 minutes of data to get a good reading, Meyers-Manor said. However, in some cases, the researchers got only around 20 seconds before the dogs opened the door, ending the trial.
This study “helps support what many owners already feel,” Meyers-Manor said, “[that] their dogs are responsive to them when they are distressed … and that they try to take action to alleviate that” distress.
Can Dogs Use Only TheirHearing Skills to Recognize When We Are Sad?
Yes, they can. Another research was made, where a food bowl was placed in the middle of a room, and two speakers were put on both sides of the bowl at the same distance. Once the dogs went to the food bowl, the speakers started playing sounds expressing human emotions such as screams (expressing sadness/anger) and laughs (expressing happiness/joy). The dogs were video-recorded so that their reactions could be evaluated later.
The main goal of the research was to determine whether the dogs would turn to the left or the right speaker. It is important to note that the same sound was played from both speakers. You may wonder why this was so essential. There are two reasons for that:
1. Just like in humans, dogs’ right side of the brain is responsible for the left side of the body and vice versa;
2. Another study has revealed that emotions perceived by dogs as positive are being processed in the left part of the brain, and negative emotions-in the right part of the brain.
Research wanted to check whether the dogs will turn to the left or to the right side, which had to indicate how the dogs perceived the sounds- as positive or negative.
The outcome revealed that the sounds related to strong emotions such as sadness, anger and joy, were accurately perceived by dogs, as they turned to the left side when a sound expressing a negative emotion was played. Also, they turned to the right side when a sound expressing a positive emotion was played.
Emotions like “surprise” and “disgust”, considered more controversial and depending on the social context, were not firmly paired by dogs with a positive or negative emotion.