Clubs Offering:
Your pup rolls over on its back, and you can’t resist giving their belly a pet or two. They kick their legs, but you can really tell if you scratched “the right spot” or they’re wiggling around because they’re feeling ticklish.
While dogs don’t giggle and wiggle their bodies to escape the prickly touch, they possess the same nerve endings on their skin. When someone touches the right spot on a dog’s body, they most likely feels a response similar to a feather-light movement across the skin.
How Do You Know if a Dog Is Ticklish?
There’s even a scientific name for the tickling sensation humans and dogs experience. The light touch across is called knismesis, which feels similar to goosebumps, itching, or when a bug lands on human skin.
This twitch on the skin differs from another tickle word known as gargalesis, or the sensation that sends people into fits of laughter. Dogs lack this awareness and don’t double up in hysterics and beg you to stop tickling them.
You won’t know until you find a tickle spot and the dog reacts to your touch. Look for a flick of the ears, a twist in the back, or pulling a foot away. A wrinkled nose provides another clue.
Every dog feels this natural reflex reaction differently. One dog might perceive a twinge on one part of its body, while another pup hardly notices a difference.
“Dogs are often ticklish on their bellies or sides,” says Dr. Mary Burch, Ph.D., a certified applied animal behaviorist and the AKC Director of the Family Dog Program. “All my recent dogs seemed ticklish when I scratched their sides. Some dogs are ticklish on their ears, neck, or back.”
Like humans, tickle spots vary from dog to dog. Some are highly sensitive, and some may yawn as if they’re bored with the test. If you’re trying to elicit a response, common spots include the paws and the base of the tail.
StepsSection 1 of 7:
{“smallUrl”:”https://www.wikihow.com/s/thumb/7/71/Tickle-a-Dog-Step-1-Version-3.jpg/v4-460px-Tickle-a-Dog-Step-1-Version-3.jpg”,”bigUrl”:”/s/thumb/7/71/Tickle-a-Dog-Step-1-Version-3.jpg/v4-728px-Tickle-a-Dog-Step-1-Version-3.jpg”,”smallWidth”:460,”smallHeight”:345,”bigWidth”:728,”bigHeight”:546,”licensing”:”
</p>
</p></div>”}
- It’s unclear whether dogs can experience gargalesis, although many dog owners seem to believe they do. It just hasn’t been studied and observed the same way as knismesis has.
- Knismesis is the source of a dog’s “scratch reflex.” This is the natural scratching and shaking a dog will do when they feel something foreign on their skin.
- To clarify, dogs will not find this kind of tickling funny, although they may find it very satisfying, kind of like that feeling you get when you scratch an itch.
Advertisement Section 2 of 7:
How to Tickle a Dog
Are Dogs Ticklish? Building a relationship and bonding with your dog is all about finding ways of playing and having fun together. And for us humans tickling is often an instinctive part of that. Consider our approach to meeting human babies – as soon as we’re sure their parents won’t mind, we tickle their cheeks to try and raise a giggle, and make a connection. But what about puppies and dogs? Are dogs ticklish? And if not, why aren’t dogs ticklish? Is there a dog tickle spot and does it give them canine giggles?
In 1897, psychologists G. Stanley Hall and Arthur Allin took to The American Journal of Psychology and coined not one, but two excellent new words to describe the sensation of being tickled. The first, knismesis, is the sensation of very light tickling which gives us goosebumps. For example, knismesis is feeling when an insect lands on our skin and makes our skin tickle and twitch. Importantly, knismesis doesn’t make us laugh.
The second kind of tickle sensation is gargalesis (I told you these words were good!). Gargalesis, or heavy tickling, is the feeling when fingertips dig into our ribs or the soles of our feet and reduce us to hopeless laughter.
Yes and no. Or perhaps yes and maybe. Knismesis is widespread in mammals, including dogs. Scientists have come to the conclusion that it is a natural reflex reaction. In fact it’s easy to imagine how that tickly sensation would be an advantage. An insect landing on the skin, or parasites like fleas, can be detected and brushed or scratched away. But as far as we know, dogs don’t experience gargalesis in response to a vigorous tickle attempt from their human.
Gargalesis is a very strange reaction. Our laughter is generally in response to something that goes on in our head – a joke, a happy thought. Gargalesis is the only time when physical touch makes us laugh. Even stranger is that we often don’t actually enjoy the tickling that makes us laugh. And we can’t tickle ourselves. This makes scientists believe that it is also a natural reflex reaction.
We know many other primates, like gorillas and some monkeys, experience gargalesis. At Washington State University, Jaak Pankseep, Professor of Neuroscience, is building up evidence that rats experience something, if not the same, then similar to gargalesis. But so far, there’s been no evidence that tickling elicits a reflex response like gargalesis in dogs. However, some dog owners are adamant that their dogs laugh when they’re being tickled. Recent studies are providing a possible explanation for this.
While you’re tickling your dog he might make a breathy panting sound that convinces you that they’re laughing. Patricia Simonet researched the sounds that dogs make and one distinct sound she found is a breathy, forced exhalation. She described this as a dog-laugh because dogs only make it when they’re playing and it differs from a normal panting sound.
A study she did showed that when recordings of the dog laughter were played to shelter dogs they became less stressed. The dogs also showed increased social behaviors towards other dogs – like play-bowing and lip licking. So you believe that your dog laughs when tickled? You’re probably seeing their play-laugh – especially if they’re giving you a huge dog smile as well.
We’ve ruled out the gargalesis response in dogs. But we’ve still got knismesis (light tickling), so let’s look some more at that. Can all dogs feel it, and do they like it?
Now here’s another funny thing about tickling (because let’s face it, everything about tickling is inherently a bit funny). We still don’t fully understand the neurological pathways that control knismesis. Including, for example, how it ends. Have you ever felt an insect crawl across your skin, and still felt the tickle from it for a few seconds after it’s gone? We have no idea why that time lag happens. Nor do we know why some of us are more susceptible to tickling than others, but it’s safe to assume that the same is true of dogs.
So some dogs might not be ticklish at all. Others might twitch at the lightest touch. And still others will fall anywhere in between.
The sensation of being lightly tickled starts with nerve endings under the surface of the skin. Those nerve endings are all over our – and our dogs’ – bodies. But we’re rarely ticklish all over. So how can we tell which areas are tickle-prone and which aren’t?
I have ticklish ribs. My sister has a really ticklish neck.The places where we’re ticklish are the idiosyncrasies that make us all different and unique. And the same is true of our dogs. Your dog might have ticklish ears, and your neighbor’s dog might have a ticklish tail. Every dog is different.