Where are dogs eyebrows? Let’s Explore

To end the uncertainty, Dr. Andrea Y. Tu, medical director at Behavior Vets NYC in New York City, spoke with The Dodo to reveal some fun facts about dogs and their debatable eyebrows. According to Dr. Tu, while dogs don’t necessarily have a patch of hair above their eyes like humans do, they do have something else. “They do have a brow ridge on their facial bone structure, as well as the associated facial muscles that form this ‘eyebrow region,’” Dr. Tu told The Dodo.

Maybe you’ve noticed how expressive your dogs face can be — with those animated eyes telling you everything she’s feeling. But while everyone agrees about those expressive eyes, one dog feature has left a lot of people scratching their heads — do dogs have eyebrows? (And if not, how do they manage to be so communicative without them?)

Dogs have muscles that control their eyebrows that don’t exist in wolves

Puppy with raised eyebrtows. (Anne Burrows)

Researchers have found that the puppy dog eyes that humans find so irresistible are made possible by muscles that have evolved in dogs since they separated from wolves. They think this was likely a result of selection by human breeders who to enable better communication with our furry friends.

Dogs can raise their inner eyebrows, which makes their eyes appear larger and gives them a forlorn look that humans read as sadness. According to a new study by Anne Burrows, a professor of anatomy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, its a look humans often find irresistible, and dogs may know this and use it to their advantage.

An evolutionary leg up

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Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, notes that dogs are wolves are very similar anatomically—with the exception of these eye muscles.

“This new study shows that these morphological changes evolved as dogs and humans have interacted over the past 20,000 years,” Hare, who also wasn’t part of the new study, says by email. (See “Dog and human genomes evolved together.”)

“They almost certainly did not evolve due to intentional selection, but instead gave dogs an advantage in their interactions with humans.” (Read why dogs are so friendly.)

Next, Kaminski hopes to examine a wider variety of dog breeds, including more ancient breeds and street dogs, to understand precisely how these muscular changes evolved.

She also wants to investigate more about our reactions to puppy dog eyes—and why we can’t resist being taken in.

Funny Dogs with Fake Eyebrows Video Compilation

MISSOULA – When you look at your dog you can almost tell what emotion they’re feeling just by the expression on its face, and theres one tiny muscle that’s key to it all.

This edition of A Wilder View takes a look at why dogs have eyebrows but wolves don’t.

Imagine coming home from a long day of work. You open the door, and your dog is giving you those puppy-dog eyes.

From this, you may feel the irresistible urge to take them on a walk or give them some belly scratches.

Eyebrow movement plays a major role in human communication and dogs have a muscle in the eyebrow region that gray wolves don’t.

As opposed to wolves, dogs are pretty great at eye contact. When dogs look at us, they often raise their inner eyebrow muscle which makes their eyes look larger and more inviting.

Although there’s never been evidence that dogs do this intentionally it still makes that loveable face.

This face that is sympathetic to our emotions is a behavior known as “paedomorphism,” meaning infant-like, so when dogs do this, it may trigger a nurturing response in people.

This also may have given a selective advantage over their counterparts which means that over thousands of years, people bred dogs that had the muscle, and now all of them have those eyebrows.

For years they were considered separate species with scientific names — canis familiaris for dogs and canis lupus for wolves.

When two animals can produce a fertile offspring, they’re considered to be of the same species. The two animals are thought to share a common, extinct wolf ancestor.

Dogs were domesticated over 33,000 years ago, and, during that time, selection processes have shaped both their anatomy and behavior and turned them into our best friends.

While we have known for a long time that dog body shape and bone anatomy have been due to artificial selection pressures, this eyebrow muscle is evidence that anatomical differences are also seen in the soft tissue.

The eyebrow muscle developed really fast in the long scale of evolution. The movement that it creates has such a strong effect that it was likely under massive evolutionary pressure.

This is interesting considering that these muscles are tiny and so paper thin you can see through them.

The reasoning for why dogs have eyebrows and wolves don’t opens up interesting questions for future research, possibly looking at similar aspects in domestic cats or horses.

The next critical question in need of answering may be looking at whether selection for tameness alone might create the same output. Copyright 2022 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.