Dogs are able to tell if people are upset or happy simply by looking at photographs of the faces of others. Researchers from Austria’s Messerli Research Institute, the Clever Dog Lab at Vetmeduni Wien, as well as the Clever Dog Lab at Vetmeduni Vienna reported in Current Biology. Ludwig Huber, Corsin Müller and other colleagues wanted to find out how dogs could distinguish happy faces from unhappy ones by simply looking at photos. The touchscreen displayed photos of happy and angry women to the twenty canines. Dogs were trained to recognize the difference between images of angry and happy eyes on a touchscreen. (Image by vetmeduni.ac.at). The two-part training program involved the dogs being divided into two different groups. One was to touch images with happy faces while the second was to perform the same task for angry faces. Researchers went one step further by removing conspicuous differences such as smile lines and teeth from happy and sad faces. They also split horizontally the images so the dogs only saw the eye and mouth regions during training. The majority of dogs could distinguish between happy and angry photos even though they only had parts of women’s faces. Dogs are more adept at identifying happy and angry images when they see new photos of the faces of people that were not present during training. Happy faces are preferred by dogs. It was much easier for the dogs to recognize happy faces rather than angry faces. It took them less time to learn to choose happy faces. The dogs were able to tell the difference between happy and angry images by looking at photos of women’s faces. Image: vetmeduni.ac.at. Ludwig Huber, the study director said that “it seems dogs dislike approaching angry face.” Corsin Muller was first author and said that “we believe dogs draw upon their memories during this exercise. Dogs can recognize facial expressions they know. “Dogs that are unfamiliar with humans would do worse, or not be able to solve the task well,” Huber said. Dogs have a better visual perception than we thought. While dogs have always been able to sense smell and hearing better than human beings, their spatial resolution is seven times less. Huber stated that it was not known before that dogs can recognize emotions. We want to better understand how these skills are developed, so we plan to do similar tests with wolves at Wolf Science Center.” Ludwig Huber and his colleagues spent three years studying whether dogs could recognize the emotions of humans or conspecifics. WWTF is a non-profit organization that promotes science and research in Vienna. Citation: Corsin A. Müller, Kira Schmitt and Anjuli A. Barber, “Dogs can discriminate emotional expressions of human faces,” Ludwig Huber. Current Biology. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.12. 055.
