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Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

1 December 2017

What Do You Get When You Cross an Anthropologist and a Zoologist?

What Do You Get When You Cross an Anthropologist and a Zoologist?

Please welcome today's guest contributor, Molly Crossman, MS, MPhil, (Twitter) for a brief introduction to the science of Anthrozoology. After reading this post, you'll hopefully add Becoming an Anthrozoologist to your reading list! This new blog is put out by the student committee of the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ website, FB, Twitter), and they're seeking contributions (details below).


Naruto’s Selfie. Credit: David Slater, Wikimedia Commons  
If you like animals* (and I’m guessing you do if you’re reading this), you probably know the story of Balto, the heroic sled dog who saved an Alaskan city from a diphtheria epidemic. Or maybe you remember Clever Hans, the horse who could apparently do arithmetic, but was really just reading unconscious nonverbal cues from the people around him (and taught us all a lot about expectancy effects as a result). More recently, you may have heard about Cecil the lion, who galvanized public interest in wildlife welfare after being shot and killed by big game hunters. The list of infamous animals goes on, from Naruto, the monkey who took one of the most famous selfies of all time, to Duke, the dog who was elected mayor of a Minnesota town three times in a row.  

These stories about animals get widespread attention, capture our hearts, and often lead to changes not only in our attitudes towards animals, but in how we treat and protect them. But these stories aren’t really just about animals. These are stories about human interactions with animals. These stories are about the roles that animals play in our lives, and the roles that we play in theirs’. And there is an entire field of study devoted to understanding these kinds of interactions between people and animals. 

Anthrozoology is the multidisciplinary study of interactions between people and animals. Anthrozoologists come from a wide range of disciplines including ethology, biology, education, environmental science, history, literature, neuroscience, nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, sociology, and veterinary medicine (to name just a few examples). What anthrozoologists all have in common is that they apply their diverse expertise to ask and answer questions about human-animal relationships.
Anthrozoologists are the folks who brought us the revelation that dogs are more important than cats when it comes to online dating, showed that dogs facilitate social interactions for individuals with physical disabilities, revealed serious ethical issues with dolphin-assisted therapy, demonstrated why people think happier chickens lay tastier eggs, helped us understand who owns pets (and who doesn’t), and explained why people are compelled to (illegally) keep primates as pets. In other words, anthrozoologists do some really cool science.  

 So, now that I’ve (hopefully) piqued your interest, where should you go to keep up with the latest in anthrozoology? I’m so glad you asked! 

Becoming an Anthrozoologist is the new blog from the student committee of the International Society for Anthrozoology. We started the blog as a way to share information on human-animal science and to help students in the field promote their work. 

Our first post came out in October, and I think it will be of interest to DYBID readers. The post was written by Lynna Feng, of the Anthrozoology Research Group at La Trobe University. In it, Lynna discusses a topic that is as personal, controversial, and polarizing as parenting techniques, and that’s dog training methods. 

Wikimedia Commons 
You are probably already familiar with the ongoing debate around positive, reward-based training methods versus dominance-based methods (if you aren’t familiar with the debate, Dr. Sophia Yin, an advocate for positive training techniques, has a helpful description on her website). But, did you know that there’s controversy even among those who agree about the importance of using positive approaches?

 In her post, Lynna addresses the debate surrounding clicker training. She discusses a recent study, in which she and her supervisors evaluated what clicker training is, and why it’s controversial. Lynna gets into why people use clicker training, and what trainers’ think are best practices. For details about what she found, be sure to read the post! 

We plan to publish the blog quarterly, so look for the next edition in January and be sure to follow the ISAZ Student Blog. If you are not already a member of ISAZ, we also hope you will consider joining. Check out the ISAZ website for more information on becoming a member, and be sure to visit the 2018 conference website for information on the upcoming conference in Sydney, Australia. The deadline for conference submissions is January 18, 2018. 

P.S., If you’re a student member of ISAZ, we hope you will consider submitting something to the blog! 

* Humans are, of course, a type of animal. However, for the sake of clarity and consistency with linguistic norms, I use the term “animal” here to refer to specifically to nonhuman animals. 
Molly K. Crossman
Grad Student & Co-Director of Innovative Interactions Lab 
Department of Psychology, Yale University 
Email: molly.crossman@yale.edu
Twitter: @mollycrossman
Web: iilab.yale.edu

 DYBID here! Did you know that Molly first contributed to DYBID with a post about her research: "Can Therapy Dogs Help Students Handle Stress?" Thanks very much for joining us again, Molly!

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ISAZ

9 February 2015

How do dogs and people respond to a crying baby?

How do dogs and people respond to a crying baby?

Guest post by: Min Hooi Yong, PhD


“Does your dog know when you are sad?” Puzzling question, perhaps? 

We get a range of answers from dog owners, from the confident “Yes!” to “Maaaaybe?”, and the hopeful “I like to think so...”. Many dogs are considered to be part of the family, and we expect our family members to empathize with us when we are sad.

A recent study found that dogs showed submissive behavior (licking and nuzzling) when an adult person pretended to cry but not when she is humming1. Does the licking and nuzzling behavior mean that the dog understand that we are feeling sad? (I hear YES-es). Or can it be that because we are crying, we ignore everyone including our dog, and so, our dog will nuzzle us seeking attention and/or comfort?
(source)

There have been many studies showing that animals (e.g. rodents, birds, chimps) experience distress or concern (empathic response) when observing either kin or non-kin in distress. For example, giving electric shocks to rats and pigeons. The observer experienced a change both behaviourally and physiologically, and these responses are often considered as an experience of emotional contagion, an elementary form of empathy. Emotional contagion is essentially the spreading of all forms of emotion from one person (or animal) to another (like the spreading of joy or distress through a crowd - think of a flash mob dance effect filtering through a crowd)2.

 Hearing a baby cry can be quite distressing. What happens to us when we, the observers, hear the cry? We respond by getting up and checking on the crying baby, “increased attention”. Our body also releases the stress hormone cortisol when we hear the cry, regardless of age or parenting experience3,4. Also, we can tell if the crying is urgent or not. We do, sometimes find crying aversive (imagine a baby crying non-stop throughout your long-distance flight).
Flickr/thedalogs
In our study, we wanted to know if dogs and humans show a similar physiological response to a baby crying. We had three questions: 
  1. We know that dogs are attached to humans, so would dogs show increased attention to a baby crying and babbling? 
  2. Exposure to uncontrollable white noise is considered aversive and elicits submissive behavior. If dogs find crying aversive, would dogs show submissive behavior towards crying as well as white noise? 
  3. Do dogs show an increased stress response (measured in their salivary cortisol levels) to a baby crying compared to white noise and a baby babbling, similar to humans?
We had 75 dogs and 74 humans listen to one of three sounds. A human baby crying:

A human baby babbling: 

 Or white noise:

 Each sound was played at an average volume of 82 decibels – similar to chamber music in a small auditorium (not loud enough to cause hearing damage, but it is loud). We collected saliva before and after listening to one sound from both dogs and humans for their cortisol levels. We also analyzed dogs’ behavior while the sound was played, and collected sound ratings about how aversive people found the sounds.

What did our three questions reveal? First, we found that both dogs and humans showed an increase in cortisol levels only after listening to crying, but no changes to baby babbling and white noise. Second, dogs showed increased attention to both the crying and babbling sounds, but not to white noise. Third, dogs displayed increased submissive behavior (e.g. the dog’s body and head were lowered, the ears were held flat and back, the tail was lowered and sometimes slightly between their legs or wagging rapidly side-to-side, the tongue pro-truded slightly, or the dog raised one leg in a hesitant or placating manner) to the crying and white noise, but not to babbling. Additionally, human participants rated the white noise as more aversive than crying (see table below for a summary). We also analyzed other possible aspects that might have influenced the dogs’ responses such as time of testing, demographic data e.g. neutered status and sex, acoustic features in the sounds (pitch and melody), and even dog owners’ unintentional cuing. We found that the responses shown were a result of distress, evident from crying.


You might ask why submissive behavior was shown during crying and white noise. Let’s start with white noise. Our human participants perceived white noise as more unpleasant compared to crying. Humans tend to cover their ears and animals also show similar avoidance, and what better way than to lower your head? On the other hand, with crying sounds, one is generally more subdued (sympathetic concern) especially when you can hear the distress meaning in the sound. The combined behavioral indicators during these sounds (e.g. lowered posture, shaking, stimulus avoidance) points toward submissive behavior.

 In humans, an increase in cortisol and attention is interpreted as a demonstration of
emotional contagion3,4. This unique pattern of physiological and behavioral responding to crying in our study is most consistent with (a) emotional contagion in dogs, providing first evidence that dogs, like humans, experience a physiological response to human infant crying, and (b) suggests the first clear evidence of cross-species empathy (i.e. canine emotional contagion to human distress). 

Author
Min Hooi Yong has recently completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Ted Ruffman in the Department of Psychology, University of Otago, New Zealand. You can follow her research, or Prof Ted Ruffman. This study has been published in the journal “Behavioural Processes”:

Yong, M. H., & Ruffman, T. (2014). Emotional contagion: Dogs and humans show a similarphysiological response to human infant crying. Behavioural Processes, 108, 155–165.
Min Hooi Yong
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the dog owners and their dogs who participated in our study, and to Stephanie McConnon, Mary Saxton, and Barbara Lowen for allowing us to use their dog videos. Mia is a female English Setter aged 3, Annie is a female Border Collie aged 9, and Flack is a male mixed breed (Collie/Husky/Heading) aged 4.

References
1. Custance, D. & Mayer, J. Empathic-like responding by domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to distress in humans: An exploratory study. Anim. Cogn. 15, 851–859 (2012).
2. De Waal, F. B. M. Putting the altruism back into altruism: The evolution of empathy. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59, 279–300 (2008).
3. Fleming, A. S., Corter, C., Stallings, J. & Steiner, M. Testosterone and prolactin are associated with emotional responses to infant cries in new fathers. Horm. Behav. 42, 399–413 (2002).
4. Giardino, J., Gonzalez, A., Steiner, M. & Fleming, A. S. Effects of motherhood on physiological and subjective responses to infant cries in teenage mothers: A comparison with non-mothers and adult mothers. Horm. Behav. 53, 149–158 (2008).

Thank you, Min, for discussing your research on Do You Believe in Dog? View other guest contributors here ~ Julie & Mia 

©  Do You Believe in Dog? 2015 
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University of Otago

15 January 2015

2015: Puppy New Year! Get some science into your dog

2015: Puppy New Year! Get some science into your dog

2015 is a bright and shiny new year for canine science! 

But first, this face:

After being a dog-less household for eight months (you might remember we sadly farewelled Elke in 2013 and gut-wrenchingly, also old man Caleb, in the first half of 2014) we welcomed a new member to the family at the end of 2014. 

Those paws. Not photoshopped.
If I'm honest with you, I'd been stalking PetRescue quietly for a month or so, not really sure if the time was right, but also open to being inspired to make it the right time to welcome a new dog into our lives. I eventually made a call to a shelter a long, long way away about a dog I'd seen who looked like the kind of dog I thought would be a good fit for our family over the next fifteen years. His profile had been up for a few weeks and I was concerned he might be nearly out of time to be adopted. The lovely shelter staff let me know he'd actually just been adopted that morning - I was thrilled for him and his new family. Probably a good thing anyway, that shelter was 5 hours' drive away - no small distance. 

 The following day I received a message from the shelter staff - there was another dog - a younger pup, similar type, would I be interested? "Send me some photos and a video clip of him" I said... and they did. I told Julie about the pup and how far away he was. "Love this story!! Keep it coming ;)" she said via email. Huh, I thought - what an adventure this could be to meet a new family member - and luckily, my partner agreed!

So a week later, coincidentally on my birthday, we headed off after lunch on a 400km (that's 250miles to those of you who prefer miles) drive to a faraway coastal town south west of Melbourne to meet this four month old pup. He had come into the regional shelter as a stray. Whether he was deliberately dumped, wandered off through an open gate, or actively strayed by jumping a fence - we'll never know. That's part of the shelter dog story - not necessarily knowing what came before. 

What we do know is this: 
  • He was not identified by microchip, had no collar with ID and was not desexed
  • No one came looking for him during his two weeks in the shelter
  • On meeting us, he was excitable, mouthy and jumpy, but calmed down fairly quickly
  • We have named him Rudy (roo-dee), inspired by Rudolph as it was Christmas week


What is he?
We've been asked that a lot! Rudy is a Staghound. Staghounds in Australia are similar to Lurchers and Longdogs in the UK - a 'type' of dog, rather than a breed. Staghounds are generally greyhound x deerhound with maybe a bit of whatever else was around the area in them too. They can vary widely in looks as they are bred with an emphasis on health, performance and longevity, rather than to a physical standard. They are generally bred to help with hunting in rural areas, but like greyhounds, can make excellent companions as well. As you'd expect, they are highly distracted by moving things.

A diet of science
Inevitably, we're feeding Rudy a daily dose of science. If you want to keep up with how he's going, you can follow the #RaisingRudy hashtag on Twitter, keep up with our Do you Believe in Dog? Facebook posts, or check in here at the blog for regular updates. I've never claimed to be a dog trainer, but I'm certainly aware of the importance of putting the wide array of scientific findings into practice with our dogs to help them have a great life and help us enjoy our time with them.

 So far, over the first couple of weeks Rudy's been with us, this has looked a bit like this:
In these early days, we're focusing on socialisation (new experiences, places, people, surfaces, sounds, smells), basic training (toilet training, recall, sit, leash walking, house behaviour, independent time outside) and getting to know Rudy (learning how he responds to new places, loud noises, other dogs and people, etc.). We're marvelling at those ears. 

 We're remembering what having a puppy in the house means (e.g. encouraging the puppy to splash its feet in a toddler pool is super funny and cute, until it starts repeating that behaviour in the indoor water bowl and floods your laundry!). We're a tidier household for it (Shoes go in cupboards! Pre-schooler's toys get put away! Remote controls go up high!).

 If, like us, it's been a while since you raised a puppy, you might enjoy the back seat experience (sometimes hilarious, sometimes frustrating!) offered by the new BBC documentary series 'Six Puppies and Us' - Episode 1 linked here:
What science have you fed your dog recently? 
What should I be sure to feed mine? 

 Let us know your thoughts by commenting on the blog, Facebook or Twitter - and join in #RaisingRudy.

 Til next time, 

 Mia

 p.s. No, this hasn't turned into just a puppy blog! The Do You Believe in Dog? team will still be bringing you regular guest posts from fellow canine scientists, monthly updates on the science that's caught our attention and news on major events we attend in 2015.

 Further reading:
Kidd A.H. & Kidd, R.M. (1989). Factors in Adults' Attitudes Toward Pets, Psychological Reports, 65 (3) 903-910. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1989.65.3.903 

 Hiby E.F., Rooney N.J. & Bradshaw J.W.S. (2004). Dog training methods: their use, effectiveness and interaction with behaviour and welfare. , Animal Welfare, 13 (1) 63-70. 

© Mia Cobb | Do You Believe in Dog? 2015
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young

21 November 2014

Dogtober = Canine science in October

What a BOOMING month for dogs and science October was! We've captured the links to all the latest blogs, research and news that caught out attention throughout Dog-tober.

Thanks to Storify (click here if the you can't see the collection of links below) you can make sure you didn't miss out too.

 Further reading:

Bradshaw J.W.S. & Nicola J. Rooney (2014). Why do adult dogs ‘play’?, Behavioural Processes, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2014.09.023

Bozkurt A., Barbara Sherman, Rita Brugarolas, Sean Mealin, John Majikes, Pu Yang & Robert Loftin (2014). Towards Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 1-1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/mis.2014.77
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