Dogs maintain an emotional bond with humans and often experience jealousy when their owners interact with other dogs, but it seems that this is not only the case in the presence of a rival, but they can also be jealous simply if they believe that their human friend pay attention to another pet, even if it’s an artificial dog — albeit a very realistic-looking one — a new study by researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand has found, published in Psychological Science .
Previous surveys of dog owners have found that more than 80% of dog owners said they have observed jealous behavior (such as barking, wriggling or pulling on the leash) when paying attention to other dogs.
Amalia Bastos, from the University of Auckland and lead author of the paper, noted that this research “has supported what many dog owners firmly believe: dogs exhibit jealous behavior when their human companion interacts with a potential rival”, and that They decided to “study this behavior further to determine if dogs, like humans, could mentally enact a situation that provoked jealousy.”
Dog and human jealousy share characteristics
Dogs are capable of displaying jealous behavior similar to how a child would if he sees his mother giving affection to another child. In people, jealousy is strongly linked to self-awareness, and so the researchers wanted to see if dogs are self-aware as well, as well as to understand the mental processes that could be behind the jealous behavior that so many owners observe.
“The results provide the first evidence that dogs can mentally represent jealousy-inducing social interactions.”
Bastos and his colleagues tested 18 dogs as they watched their owners sit next to realistic-looking fake dogs, or next to a wool-lined cylinder. The fake dog acted as a rival for the affection of the master, and the cylinder represented the object of control. Later, the researchers hid their potential rival from the dogs’ sight by placing a barrier between them, and a force meter allowed them to verify that although they no longer saw their rival, the dogs tried to reach their owners with force when they simulated petting the fake dog behind the barrier.
When they repeated the experiment with the cylinder -which the owners caressed and talked to as if it were a dog-, this time in sight of the dogs and placing the false rival 1.5 meters from the owner, the animals shot very less belt force.
The authors of the study found three characteristics of jealous behavior similar to those of humans in dogs: signs of jealousy appeared only when the owner interacted with what they considered a rival, and not before an inanimate object; these occurred as a result of the interaction of the owner, and not by the mere presence of the potential rival; and it also arose when the interaction between its owner and the social rival was hidden from their view, but they could imagine it.
“It is now clear that dogs react to jealousy-inducing situations, even if they occur out of sight.”
“These results support claims that dogs display jealous behavior. They also provide the first evidence that dogs can mentally represent jealousy-inducing social interactions,” Bastos explained, adding that “previous studies have confused jealous behavior with play, interest, or aggression, because they never evaluated the Dogs’ reactions to the owner and the social rival who were present in the same room, but did not interact.
Bastos concludes that “there is still much work to be done to establish the extent of the similarities between the minds of humans and other animals, especially in terms of understanding the nature of emotional experiences in non-human animals.” “It is too early to say whether dogs experience jealousy like we do, but it is now clear that they react to jealousy-inducing situations, even if they occur out of sight.”
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