Research Agenda
Why dog behavior?
Here, I am going to describe sources that I used in order to support the different aspects that affect a dog's behavior and how this may affect their chances at getting adopted.
Review of the Literature
Aria, Massimo, et al. “The Scholar's Best Friend: Research Trends in Dog Cognitive and Behavioral Studies - Animal Cognition.” SpringerLink, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 21 Nov. 2020, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-020-01448-2? ltclid.
Massimo Aria is a professor of statistics for social sciences, statistical inference, and statistics for business decision making at the degree course in economy of the University of Naples Federico II. He has been featured and has been a part of over 100 other academic and scientific journals. Two of these journals include studies about behavioral patterns in dogs. There are many other highly educated individuals featured in this paper that have a background in cognitive and behavioral studies who have attended universities that include the University of Naples Federico II and University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli.” Their combined research goes to show that there has been increasing interest to perform behavioral and cognitive studies on dogs, “Therefore, the year 2005 has been used as “starting point” to perform an in-depth bibliometric analysis of the scientific activity in dog cognitive and behavioral studies” (Massimo). This paper serves to confirm that studies conducted on dog cognitive and behavioral patterns are surpassing general studies of cognition and behavior, to clarify the relation between the growth in scientific production in dog cognition and behavior and research themes, and to supply a bibliometric analysis in relation to the scientific activity created from studies on cognition and behavior of dogs.
Ilska, Joanna, et al. “Genetic Characterization of Dog Personality Traits.” OUP Academic,
Oxford University Press, 1 June 2017, https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/206/2/1101/6064288?login=true.
Joanna Ilska has been an active participant in genetic analysis publications and studies. She has her BS in Applied Biosciences (Animal Science), MS in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis at the University of Edinburgh, and PhD in genomic prediction of breeding values in broiler chickens from the University of Edinburgh. Not only does she have around 23 publications out, but she is a quantitative geneticist and genetic research manager. This goes for all of the other contributors. This journal serves to discuss the idea that genetics play a main role in a dog’s personality. They go into within-breed genetic variance speculations and studies, “We identified substantial genetic variance for several traits, including fetching tendency and fear of loud noises, while other traits revealed negligibly small heritabilities” (Ilska).
Lazzaroni, Martina, et al. “The Effect of Domestication and Experience on the Social
Interaction of Dogs and Wolves with a Human Companion.” Frontiers in Psychology,
vol. 11, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00785.
In the peer reviewed journal “The Effect of Domestication and Experience on the Social Interaction of Dogs and Wolves With a Human Companion,” Lazzaroni and others look into the interactions between dogs and humans while taking specific interest in non-related species being able to communicate with one another. The authors specialize differences in reconciliation patterns between wolves and dogs by studying the development of wolves, and how they have evolved in their cognitive abilities and social interactions. They use a pre-test and test involving social interactions with humans and food. They are looking to see how dogs' behavior has changed when exposed to human communication. The results of current wolf-dog studies on human-directed behaviors seem to suggest that domestication has acted on dogs’ general attitudes and not on specific socio-cognitive skills. This leads to explain why there are 19 main referential signs that are referred to in the National Geographic article referenced because they describe “sequential behaviors” in the study mentioned about how dogs being domesticated has affected parts of their social behaviors. They describe the social interactions that occur among dogs and humans that has made it easier for us to communicate with one another across species.
Defining the Problem
Hare, Brian, and Michael Tomasello. “Human-like Social Skills in Dogs?” Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, vol. 9, no. 9, 2005, pp. 439–444., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.07.003.
Brian Hare is a well established and respected scholar that is known for his work in dogs and cognitive studies, “Center of Cognitive Neuroscience, a Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology, and Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2004, and in 2005, following his work at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig was awarded the Sofia Kovalevskaja Award, Germany’s most prestigious award for scientists under 40. In 2007, Smithsonian Magazine named Hare one of the top 35 scientists under 36. Hare has published over 100 scientific papers and his research has received consistent national and international attention. In 2019, Hare and his research were featured in Steven Speilberg’s documentary series Why We Hate. Hare’s first book with co-author Vanessa Woods, The Genius of Dogs is a New York Times Bestseller” (Hare, 2022). They compared how a chimpanzee would react to a human's cues versus a dogs reaction to a human’s cue. They found that the dog’s would respond to it as a result of domestication. In his publication with Michael Tomasello, “Human-like social skills in dogs?'' they talk about how we have rubbed off on dogs in that we have developed better social cues to communicate with one another. Their conclusions allow them to assume “ that dogs discriminate human communicative behaviors from other behaviors, in ways similar to human infants” (Hare 2005). This is related to the other studies because through domestication, the dogs are able to pick up on social cues and behaviors in order to better communicate with humans, showing how non-related species can interact with one another.
Howell, Tiffani J, et al. “Puppy Parties and beyond: The Role of Early Age
Socialization Practices on Adult Dog Behavior.” Veterinary Medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), Dove Medical Press, 29 Apr. 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6067676/.
All three authors, Tiffani Howell, Tammie King, and Pauleen Bennett, are a part of the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University. Tiffani Howell has many research outputs, and she takes a particular interest in dog behavior and cognition, human-animal relationships, and animal welfare. In this journal they explain the life timeline of a dog and the importance that specific times have in shaping how they develop behavioral and social patterns, “Puppy socialization practices play a large role in the development of well-adjusted adult dogs that display few undesirable behaviors, and which can establish a positive, lifelong relationship with their owner. Age-appropriate socialization practices should begin within a few days of birth, and should extend well into adulthood” (Howell).
Udell, Monique. “Ontogeny's Impacts on Human–Dog Communication.”
Animal Behaviour, 24 Apr. 2014, https://www.academia.edu/4724764/Ontogenys_impacts_on_human_dog_communication?auto=citations&from=cover_page.
Monique Udell is a faculty member at Oregon State University who is involved with animal and rangeland sciences. Her work involves dog domestication, dog communication, and dog behavioral patterns. She goes on to describe how domestic dogs have developed a sensitivity to human cues while their closest relatives, wolves, do not experience the same stimulation. They specifically look at a dog's response to the human cue of pointing toward something (i.e. food, toy, etc.) They were able to determine that this sensitivity for social cues is heavily developed when a dog is between 6 to 24 weeks. They found that even with no pretense of knowing what a point means, dogs were able to pick up what was being said giving us a better understanding of how the relationship has evolved between dogs and humans, “...delineating the specific ontogenetic factors that contribute to the dog’s ability to follow human social cues such as points, would be a valuable contribution to our understanding of the human-dog relationship” (Udell).
Advocating Solutions
McGreevy, Paul D., et al. “Dog Behavior Co-Varies with Height, Bodyweight and Skull Shape.”
PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 12, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080529.
Paul D. McGreevy is a faculty member of veterinary science at the University of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia. Dana Georgevsky and Johanna Carrasco also serve as faculty members of veterinary science at the same university with other contributors having affiliations with the Brain and Mind Research Institute as well as Medicine. Others were also involved with the school of veterinary medicine at University of Pennsylvania. In this publication, McGreevy works to understand how the physiology of dogs can actually play a role in how they perceive information which in turn may have an effect on their behavioral patterns. They specifically look and that cephalic index (CI) which vary across breeds and can even be impacted by head shape. They conducted a study by surveying about 8,300 dog owners and then cross-examined, “...breed-specific behavioral profiles and independent estimates of breed CI based on skull measurements of 588 dogs” (McGreevy). From the study conducted, they were able to conclude that there is a relationship between a dog’s behavior and their height, bodyweight, and skull shape, “particular canine morphotypes tend to be reliably associated with particular behavioral profiles” (McGreevy).
Willen, Regina M., et al. “Factors Determining the Effects of Human
Interaction on the Cortisol Levels of Shelter Dogs.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Elsevier, 11 Nov. 2016, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159116303185.
Regina M. Willen is a member of the Department of Psychology at Wright State University who has done lots of studies on how stress affects different walks of life. In this, Willen examines the stresses that are put on dog’s affect their behavior pattern which in turn impacts their chances of being adopted. Here, they specifically look at how cortisol levels correlate with a dog’s environment, “shelters are stressful environments as indicated by a variety of physiological and behavioral measures” (Willen). They examine physiological levels of stress in relation to human interaction and life in the shelters, “glucocorticoid levels can be useful as markers of the psychological state and welfare of the dogs housed in animal shelters” (Willen). They conclude that human interaction can play a major role in dog well-being.
Zachos, Elaina. “Dogs Use 19 Referential Signals to Communicate with Humans.” Animals,
National Geographic, 3 May 2021,
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/dog-referential-signaling-gestures.
Elaina Zachos is the author of tons of publications, specifically some ones on animal behavior, that are on National Geographic UK who is a background researcher that writes many journals and articles on animal behavior. In one of her publications, “Dogs Use 19 Referential Signals to Communicate with Humans,” it references a study done on dog behavior from Worsely that attempts to find some connection to domestication of dogs and how it affects their social abilities with others, Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) meanwhile provide an ideal non-primate candidate for investigating referential signalling due to their unique relationship with humans that centres on non-verbal communication with frequent interaction” (Worsley and O'Hara, 2018). This has been cited many times and has led to the idea that there are 19 gestures that dogs use with us to communicate. This is related to the other references because they both discuss ways in which the domestication of dogs has affected their social behavior and communicative capabilities.