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Canine Science: How Dogs Communicate
How Dogs Talk To Each Other Using Sound, Smell and Body Language
Dogs communicate with each other in a variety of ways, using sounds, smells and body language. This knol offers a guide to some of the weird and wonderful methods canines use to get their messages across.
Introduction
Its good to talk, and dogs chat away incessantly. In their own particular way, of course.
Studies of the assorted barks, whines, hisses and growls our best friends emit reveal some surprising truths.
Dogs, for instance, have a word for cats and a special whine to signify sexual frustration.
But the most surprising news is that dogs talk in subtler ways than wed previously imagined. They rub, scratch, spray and even, er, dump their news.
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Dogs can tell a lot from the tone of each others growls.
Researchers have found that the bigger the dog, the more narrowly spaced the formants in its growl and therefore the harsher it sounds, compared to the growl of a weaker dog. They think this passes on a lot of information about how capable the bigger dogs are of inflicting injuries on their smaller adversaries. [1]
Dogs make a snapping sound by quickly shutting their jaws and hitting their teeth together. Researchers think it is a defence signal used when dogs feel under threat. [2]
Male dogs have a special whine that signals sexual frustration.
They use it when they see another pair of dogs having sex or around a whelping female. They also use it when they are refused sex by a female in heat. [2]
Amongst feral dogs, different sounds produce different respones. Howls gather dogs to one location.
Whimpers encourage dogs to look after each other. [3]
Some dogs have a word for cat.
The South American Maku tribe use dogs to aid them during hunting. The dogs learn to signal what type of prey they are hunting by the type of bark they emit. They have distinctive barks for different animals, including the agouti, peccary, pacca, tapir and jaguar. [4]
In the wild, only puppies bark.
Wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes and other members of the domestic dogs extended family use other vocalisations when they become adults. They whine, howl and whimper but they very rarely bark. [5]
Puppies cant bark until they are between two and four weeks old. During the first weeks of their life they whine and whimper instead, usually to signal distress. A whimper lasts on average for a second, but extremely agitated puppies have been known to cry out at the rate of 100 whimpers per minute. [6]
Dogs puff. They make the noise by pushing air through their partly opened mouths. Puffing is a signal of mild aggression. Dogs hiss through their noses. It is believed this is a signal of a perceived threat being present. [7]
In 2001, Japanese researchers claimed to have cracked the canine code and translated, for the first time, the dogs repertoire of barks and howls.
The team, made up of a vet and an acoustics expert, attached microphones to the collars of their sample dogs then recorded the wave patterns associated with six different emotional states, from sadness and happiness to alarm and self-awareness. Using the results of their studies, they built a Bow Lingual device that translated dogs yelps and whines into the written word. The scientific community greeted the results with skepticism, so much so that the inventors were dismissed as barking mad and awarded the team an infamous Ig Nobel Prize, for mad science.
The inventors had the last laugh, however. They teamed up with a Japanese electronics firm and built a simple household version of their translating machine that translated dog sounds into phrases from I cant stand it to how boring. It sold in its thousands first in Japan then around the world. Inevitably, a cat translator followed. [8]
Books on Canine Evolution Barking: Some Canine Statistics
A Beagle was once recorded barking 907 times in 10 minutes. [9]
A dogs bark lasts, on average, for 0.2 seconds. [10]
According to a study, only two out of three dogs bark during the night.[11]
Sleeping dogs are more alert to the sound of other dogs barking than any other sound. [12]
Dogs living in groups are more likely to bark than dogs living on their own. [13]
A dogs bark can be just as bad as its bite.
In Japan, a doctor treated two cases of middle-aged men who had suddenly and inexplicably lost hearing in the lower frequency ranges. He discovered that both had suffered from acoustic trauma and been permanently damaged by a large dog barking loudly into their ears. [14]
The Basenji is the only breed of dog that never barks. It does, however, yodel. [15]
A distant relative, the yodelling dingo which lives in the primitive eastern highlands of New Guinea produces a blood-curdling cry that has predictably enshrined it in tribal myth. Its said the dingo harbours the souls of the dead and the living can communicate with their lost loved ones by singing along with the creature. [16]
Body Talk: Physical Language
Dogs show dominance over other dogs using body language.
As the area most commonly attacked when dogs fight, the neck is often the object of this behaviour.
A higher-ranking dog may place its head or its forelimbs on a lower-ranking dogs neck or shoulders. If the lower-ranking dog is submissive the dominant dog may even place its muzzle or head in its mouth. [17]
Dogs puff themselves up to look tough.
Like cats, dogs faced with an aggressive situation try to create the impression they are bigger than they really are.
Faced by a rival, dogs will initially shift their weight forward to make themselves look more bulky then stiffen their legs so to make them look as long as possible. They will also elevate their head, neck and ears and - just like cats - piloerect their hair to make their bodies look bigger. They will also lift their tails up high, sometimes vibrating it back and forth as if to taunt their opponent. Dogs know, however, when it is time to stop acting the hero.
When a fight is about to break out, they will shrink themselves down again to protect their throats and ears from injury. [18]
Happy dogs wag to the right.
A study of how how dogs respond to different stimuli was conducted by Italian neuroscientists at the University of Trieste and vets at the Univeristy of Bari. Over a period of a month, they watched a group of 30 dogs respond when they were briefly joined either by their owner, an unfamiliar human, a cat or an unfamiliar, dominant dog, a Belgian shepherd. To the scientists surprise, the dogs tails wagged vigorously to the right when they were shown their owners and much less so when they saw the unfamiliar human. The cat produced a small wag to the right, but the dominant Belgian shepherd sparked a sharp move to the left. The scientists concluded the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while those on the left express more negative feelings. [19]
Dogs conduct staring matches.
Breaking eye contact is a sign of subordination so dogs test each other in order to achieve dominance. The dog that blinks or looks away first is the loser and consequently ranked lower. [20]
Dogs win confrontations by confusing their enemies.
When attached by fierce predators, breeds that guard livestock rarely fight back with violence. Instead, they confuse their opponent by acting oddly, performing a repertoire of barking, tail-wagging, social-greeting and play behaviours. Usually, the predator is so taken aback by the inappropriate behaviour it capitulates. [21]
Talking Dirty: Smells
Dogs talk through their backsides.
Canines have anal sacs located in their rear quarters, containing a mixture of pungent fatty acids. When a dog defecates the muscles around its anus squeezes out a few drops of this cocktail on to the stool. Dogs have an extraordinarily well developed sense of smell. Scientists think the discharge contains complex information which other dogs then check out when they pass the deposited stool. You could call it poetry in motion.
No one has yet tackled the question of whether this means pooper scoopers and dog poo bags are infringing on dogs free speech rights. [22]
Dogs cock their legs to urinate for a good reason. Urine is a powerful signalling device and by placing their discharge as high as they can up a tree, lamppost or fence, a dog is giving other dogs the best possible chance to notice them. In the wild, dogs go to even greater lengths to place their urine marks as high as possible. When doing a wee, female bushdogs do a handstand. [23]
Further Reading: The Dog: How A Wolf Became Man's Best Friend
Canine Intelligence
Canine Senses: How Dogs Smell
Canine Senses: How Dogs See
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