Tag: Dogs

Pet project hunts genetic links to behaviour by polling owners on their companions’ quirks.

Heidi Ledford. Tail-chasing in dogs is suspected to share genetic roots with human obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Addie plays hard for an 11-year-old greater Swiss mountain dog — she will occasionally ignore her advanced years to hurl her 37-kilogram body at an unwitting house guest in greeting. But she carries a mysterious burden: when she was 18 months old, she started licking her front legs aggressively enough to wear off patches of fur and draw blood.

Addie has canine compulsive disorder — a condition that is thought to be similar to human obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Canine compulsive disorder can cause dogs to chase their tails for hours on end, or to suck on a toy or body part so compulsively that it interferes with their eating or sleeping.

Addie may soon help researchers to determine why some dogs are more prone to the disorder than others. Her owner, Marjie Alonso of Somerville, Massachusetts, has enrolled her in a project called Darwin’s Dogs, which aims to compare information about the behaviour of thousands of dogs against the animals’ DNA profiles. The hope is that genetic links will emerge to conditions such as canine compulsive disorder and canine cognitive dysfunction — a dog analogue of dementia and possibly Alzheimer’s disease. The project organizers have enrolled 3,000 dogs so far, but hope to gather data from at least 5,000, and they expect to begin analysing DNA samples in March.

“It’s very exciting, and in many ways it’s way overdue,” says Clive Wynne, who studies canine behaviour at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Researchers have long struggled to find genetic links to human psychiatric disorders by analysing DNA samples from thousands of people. Those efforts have in recent years met with some success in schizophrenia and depression. But for some conditions, including OCD, not a single robust genetic link has been sifted from the background noise of normal genetic variation.

Human studies are difficult in part because the species is so genetically diverse, says Wynne. Dogs, however, are more genetically homogeneous. Selected over thousands of years for particular characteristics, they display less genetic variation than do humans. Pure-bred dogs, in particular, have been rendered highly genetically consistent to achieve a homo­genous appearance and behaviour.

Dogs also live side-by-side with humans, which some think can make them a better model for human disorders than mice living in a laboratory cage.

These qualities have made dogs attractive targets for studies of analogues to human ailments, including epilepsy, cancer and various psychiatric disorders. Border collies, for example, may over-react to loud noises in a manner akin to people with anxiety disorders. Geneticist Elinor Karlsson of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Amherst and her colleagues have studied canine compulsive disorder, a condition that is particularly common in certain breeds, including Dobermann pinschers. Their studies in 150 dogs have found possible links to four genes that encode proteins that act in the brain (R. Tang et al. Genome Biol. 15, R25; 2014).

To expand on those results, Karlsson has decided to go big. Limiting her studies to specific breeds would make it easier to pick out some genetic links, but others might be missed. So Karlsson and her colleagues, including Jesse McClure, a former dog trainer for the US Marine Corps, decided to collect data from mongrels as well as pure-bred dogs and to crowdsource the data collection.

That focus on mixed-breed dogs is unusual but shrewd, says Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Although more than half of the dogs in the United States are mongrels, genetic studies tend to focus on pure-bred animals. “Genetics often deals with the interactions between genes,” says Boyko. “And if you want to truly understand those, you want to study individuals where you’ve shuffled up the genes.”

Human participants in Darwin’s Dogs, which launched last October, answer about 130 questions about their pets’ behaviour. The questions cover everything from ‘Does your dog generally enjoy life?’ (the answer, says Karlsson, is overwhelmingly ‘yes’) to ‘Does your dog cross its paws when it lies down?’. Some questions were inspired by surveys that assess impulsivity in humans. Other questions have been suggested by Alonso, who is the executive director of the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, and by other dog trainers on the basis of observations made over decades of working with animals that have behavioural problems.

Karlsson says that she is thinking of expanding the list of questions even further. “Fortunately, it turns out that people love to talk about their dogs,” she says.

Ultimately, the success of the project may hinge on the quality of those surveys and the specificity of the questions asked, says Wynne. Asking owners whether their dog is happy, for example, could yield mixed results. “One person’s unhappy dog is another person’s comfortably resting dog,” he says. “A good question would be: ‘Does your dog poop on the carpet?’ Because poop on the carpet is pretty damn clear.”

It is still unclear how useful the results from dogs will be in shedding light on human behavioural variation. Karlsson is hopeful that even if different genes are involved in the two species, they may converge on the same cellular pathways. Gerald Nestadt, a psychiatrist who specializes in OCD at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, notes that affected animals often display only one type of compulsive behaviour, whereas a human with OCD will typically have several.

Even so, he adds, the field is hungry for any leads it can get. “Anything that will help is worth trying,” he says. “I think this project is a great idea.”

For their part, Alonso and other participants are eager to learn more about their own dogs and why they behave the way they do. Miranda Workman of Buffalo, New York, enrolled her three dogs — Zeus, Athena and Sherlock — into the study, in part to gain insight into their behavioural quirks. Although Athena, a 34-kilogram Dutch shepherd, was bred to be a dedicated herding and guarding dog, she has a jovial side that is not often found in her breed. And Sherlock, a Jack Russell, is more shy and sensitive than other terriers.

“I have some dogs that don’t necessarily fit the stereotype,” says Workman. “Is it their environment that’s different or are they different? It will be fun to find out why they are that way.”

Nature 529, 446–447 (28 January 2016) doi:10.1038/529446a

http://www.nature.com/news/index.html   Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/dog-dna-probed-for-clues-to-human-psychiatric-ills-1.19235  Original web page at Nature

A recent study from the University of Helsinki shows that the social gazing behavior of domestic dogs resembles that of humans: dogs view facial expressions systematically, preferring eyes. In addition, the facial expression alters their viewing behavior, especially in the face of threat. The study was recently published in the science journal PLOS ONE.

The study utilized eye gaze tracking to demonstrate how dogs view the emotional expressions of dog and human faces. Dogs looked first at the eye region and generally examined eyes longer than nose or mouth areas. Species-specific characteristics of certain expressions attracted their attention, for example the mouths of threatening dogs. However, dogs appeared to base their perception of facial expressions on the whole face.

Threatening faces evoked attentional bias, which may be based on an evolutionary adaptive mechanism: the sensitivity to detect and avoid threats represents a survival advantage. Interestingly, dogs’ viewing behavior was dependent on the depicted species: threatening conspecifics’ faces evoked longer looking but threatening human faces instead an avoidance response. Threatening signals carrying different biological validity are most likely processed via distinctive neurocognitive pathways.

“The tolerant behavior strategy of dogs toward humans may partially explain the results. Domestication may have equipped dogs with a sensitivity to detect the threat signals of humans and respond them with pronounced appeasement signals,” says researcher Sanni Somppi from the University of Helsinki.

This is the first evidence of emotion-related gaze patterns in non-primates. Already 150 years ago Charles Darwin proposed that the analogies in the form and function of human and non-human animal emotional expressions suggest shared evolutionary roots. Recent findings provide modern scientific support for Darwin’s old argument.

A total of 31 dogs of 13 different breeds attended the study. Prior the experiment the dogs were clicker-trained to stay still in front of a monitor without being commanded or restrained. Due to positive training approach, dogs were highly motivated to perform the task.

The study is part of the collaboration project of Faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Behavioural Science, University of Helsinki and Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University. Previously, the research group of professor Outi Vainio from the University of Helsinki has discovered that socially informative objects in images, as personally familiar faces and social interaction, attract dogs’ attention.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/  Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160119074313.htm  Original web page at Science Daily

Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, the human capacity for cooperation is something quite special. Cooperating with one another requires a certain amount of prosocial behaviour. This means helping others without any direct personal benefit.

Prosociality has already been demonstrated in animals that are very closely related with humans, i.e. primates. In other animals, the phenomenon has so far only been studied experimentally in rats and jackdaws. One study found prosocial behaviour in dogs toward humans. According to Friederike Range of the Messerli Research Institute, however, it remains questionable whether the dogs were merely reacting to the communication from the humans and were being “obedient” or if they were truly exhibiting prosocial behaviour.

“Dogs and their nearest relatives, the wolves, exhibit social and cooperative behaviour, so there are grounds to assume that these animals also behave prosocially toward conspecifics. Additionally, over thousands of years of domestication, dogs were selected for special social skills,” explains study director Range. For this reason, Range and her colleagues Mylene Quervel-Chaumette, Rachel Dale and Sarah Marshall-Pescini studied 16 dogs to test their readiness to benefit familiar versus unfamiliar partners.

The researchers studied the prosocial behaviour of the animals using a bar-pulling task in which the dogs had to pull trays and decide whether a second dog would receive a treat or not. In the test, the donor dogs used their mouths to pull a string to bring a tray toward a second dog. They could choose either an empty tray or a tray containing a treat on the partner’s side.

Dogs donate to familiar partners more often than to unfamiliar ones.

Whether the donor dogs knew the recipient made a difference. Donor dogs pulled the giving tray more often for familiar dogs than for unfamiliar ones. “Dogs truly behave prosocially toward other dogs. That had never been experimentally demonstrated before. What we also found was that the degree of familiarity among the dogs further influenced this behaviour. Prosocial behaviour was exhibited less frequently toward unfamiliar dogs than toward familiar ones.

In the bar-pulling task, the donor dogs decided whether another dog would receive a treat or not. The donor dog itself did not get the treat. The only purpose of the task was to benefit the other dog. By conducting several control tests, the researchers excluded the possibility that the dogs were simply pulling the trays for the fun of it. Donor dogs were reserved in pulling the tray when an unfamiliar dog was in the next enclosure.

At the end of each test run, the researchers conducted another test to show that the donor dogs knew what pulling the tray meant. They allowed the donor dogs to pull on a tray to give themselves a treat, and all dogs did just that. “This control excludes the possibility that the dogs did not pull on the tray out of fear of the unfamiliar dogs. Given the same situation, the dogs gladly gave themselves a treat,” says Range.

“We were also able to disprove the argument that the dogs pulled the string less frequently because they were distracted by the unfamiliar partner during the test. Only rarely did a donor dog interact with the unfamiliar dog,” Range explains.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/  Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151216082345.htm  Original web page at Science Daily

Five hundred citizen scientists around the world have contributed data to a study of what goes on inside the minds of their dogs. The research, appearing Sept. 16 in PLoS ONE, analyzes data collected by 500 dog owners who played the same games at home that researchers use in the laboratory to find out about a dog’s cognitive skills and problem-solving. On five of the seven tests analyzed, citizen science data corresponded closely to what had been produced by labs at Duke University and elsewhere.

For example, in one of the game-like tests, dogs were found to rely more on their memory than their sense of smell to find a hidden treat. The dogs watched as their owner hid food under one of two cups. Then while the dog’s vision was obscured, the owner switched the food to the other cup. If dogs could smell the food, they should have been able to choose the correct cup, but owners found that most dogs went to where they last saw the food.

The data were collected through a website called Dognition.com that was developed by Brian Hare, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke who studies primate and dog cognition. Hare is also the founder of the Canine Cognition Center at Duke, which has a network of 1,000 dog owners who can bring their pets into the lab to participate in research. “They’re just games,” Hare said. “The owners love playing them and the dogs love playing them. I realized more people could play them if they were online.”

More than 17,000 dog owners from downtown Durham to Finland have signed up through Dognition and are sharing their data with the researchers. “The data these dog owners are producing is quality data,” said Evan MacLean, a senior research scientist at Duke and co-director of the Canine Cognition Center. “It matches the results we see coming out of the top research groups all over the world.”

According to MacLean, the memory-over-smell result has been replicated in seven different research groups and more than a dozen different studies. “Most people think dogs use their sense of smell for everything,” MacLean said. “But actually dogs use a whole range of senses when solving problems.”

Analysis of the unusually large dataset created by Dognition has also found that all dogs have a unique set of cognitive skills that they use to navigate the world around them. Some dogs were found to be good communicators, some had better memories and others were better at taking their owner’s perspective.

“Most people think of intelligence as glass that is more or less full,” Hare said. “But intelligence is more like ice cream. Everybody has different flavors. Being good at one thing doesn’t mean you will be good at everything else.” Hare said these kinds of findings are only possible with the big data sets that citizen scientists are able to generate. “‘So much is possible when you have this much data,” Hare said. “I’m looking forward to dog owners answering all the big questions that have puzzled scientists for decades.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/   Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150916161827.htm  Original web page at Science Daily

Ane Møller Gabrielsen received her doctorate from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on dogs in society and culture this spring. She opposes a Norwegian ban on six dog breeds. Norway bans ownership of pit bulls, American Staffordshire terriers (Amstaffs), Fila Brasileros, Tosa Inu, Dogo Argentinio and Czechoslovakian wolfhounds. But in the four cases where a human has been killed by a dog in the past few decades, none of the culprits were from these breeds.

The difference between dog breeds is often quite small — it is actually not possible to definitively decide the breed of a dog unless it has a complete family tree, ID chip and registration. Nonetheless, the ban on certain “dangerous” dog breeds is in many ways the essence of dog regulations in Norway. Not to say that there is no such thing as a dangerous dog, but what makes a dog dangerous has nothing to do with breed — it all comes down to treatment and training, Gabrielsen says.

Gabrielsen has the support of the Norwegian Kennel Club and several other groups in her opposition to a ban on specific dog breeds. She believes that training is the deciding factor in whether or not a dog is safe to be around, a position with which most dog owners agree. But this is where the agreement stops with a lot of dog owners. There are two main philosophies when it comes to dog training, and they do not agree.

In addition to regulations on banned dog breeds in Norway, Gabrielsen’s dissertation looks at the conflict between the two main types of dog training used today. There is of course many variations in these two training philosophies, but it is mainly the balance between punishment and reward that is the difference.

The debate between followers of the different training philosophies has often lead to heated discussions on net forums, where no one party is more polite than the other. Gabrielsen has studied this debate, and observed the way the two groups butt heads.

Gabrielsen has a dog herself, a boxer named Hilma. “My dog is trained using clicker training,” she says. Clicker training involves the training using a little device to make a clicking sound every time the dog does something right, and giving it a treat. The dog eventually learns to associate the click and the treat with that action.

Clicker training originated in the USA, and was introduced to Norway a few decades ago. Particularly younger dog owners and women tend to use reward-based training methods, and the approach is becoming more and more common. This method stems from the research of behavioural psychologists B. F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov. It is among the dog training methods that use reward centrally. The training is easy, both for the dog and the owner

On the other side are those who believe yanking on a dog’s collar when it does something wrong is much more effective. Gabrielsen disagrees. “I’ve come to see both arguments, but i’m still completely on the side of reward. I see no reason for physical punishment,” she says.

Some people find this provoking, calling it misguided kindness, and a development in society that they don’t want any part of. The believe that only rewards won’t make your dog safe — you won’t see any results from too much kindness. “Some people draw parallels to raising children. It is important as a parent to show who is the boss,” says Gabrielsen

The idea behind this is also rooted in biology. A wolf pack has an unambiguous leader, and according to followers of this style of training, you have to be that alpha male. This is the more traditional training style, rooted in Germany and in military discipline. It is often used by older dog owners, and more commonly by men.

Maybe the emergence of reward-based training has something to do with how dogs are used in Norway. The amount of watchdogs and hunting dogs is going down. Most people who own dogs these days want a loving, happy family member. Research on dogs and the position of dogs in society has not been very common in Norway, and hasn’t always been very academic, despite the fact that it has become an increasingly popular topic.

“There are no exact numbers, but the number of dogs in Norway is estimated to have increased from 400,000 to 500,000 over the past decade,” she explains. At the same time, this means that more people need to train their dogs, and find a method that works for them. The main goal of both of these philosophies is the same — to train a dog that you can trust. But this has nothing to do with breed, Gabrielsen says.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/  Science Dail

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150903081456.htm  Original web page at Science Daily

The hierarchy in a group of dogs is not based on aggression but on submissiveness. A dog ranked lower in the hierarchy displays signals of submissive behaviour towards dogs ranked higher. These findings have for the first time been substantiated by means of measurements by dog researcher Joanne van der Borg of Wageningen University and colleagues based in Utrecht. They are published in the journal PLOS ONE on 26 August.

In the study into dominance, a group of dogs was placed together on working days, and stable relationships formed between them after a few months. By closely observing and analysing the exchange of seven postures and 24 behaviours by the dogs, the researchers were able to establish a hierarchy. This proved to be linear.

The suitability of signals as a measure of dominance was determined using the exchange of signals between two animals. Suitable signals are postures or behaviours which are only displayed within a relationship from animal A to animal B and not in the opposite direction. Based on the receipt of submissive signals, the dogs were ranked from high to low. They formed a linear hierarchy.

The study supports the view that the dominance in a group of dogs is not determined by aggression, as many dog owners and dog trainers believe. Aggression is found to be exhibited by higher-ranked dogs towards lower-ranked dogs but also in the opposite direction, from lower-ranked dogs towards higher-ranked dogs. For this reason, signals of aggression are not suitable as a measure of dominance.

The idea of dominance in dogs is popular among some dog trainers in various countries. They believe that dogs, like wolves, are natural born fighters with only one aim: to reach the top of the hierarchy. By contrast, a different school of thought among dog trainers holds that dominance is an outdated and obsolete notion which is not applicable to our domestic dogs. There has been much misunderstanding about the interpretation of this view, because until now there was a lack of substantiation by means of hard figures.

The signals of submissiveness from a dog meeting another member of its species can best be read from the lowering of the posture compared to the other dog. Another expression of acknowledgement of the higher status of the other individual is body-tail-wagging. This behaviour, often seen in young dogs when greeting other dogs, involves the tail moving in quite broad strokes, often with the hindquarters (the hind part of the body) moving with it. Both forms of submissiveness are an expression of ‘formal dominance’, because the context (aggression, greeting, play) does not matter. The findings are in line with previous results into dominance among wolves in captivity and Italian feral dogs.

The study contributes to our knowledge about the ways in which dogs communicate their status towards other dogs. This is important for correctly classifying the hierarchical relationship between two dogs, and probably also between human and dog. This in turn helps establish the correct diagnosis in the event of problem behaviour and will therefore improve the welfare of dogs.

Alongside the linearity of the hierarchy, Van der Borg’s research also established the gradient of the order of ranking. The graphical representation of the gradient of the hierarchy in a group of dogs is a measure of the dominance style within the group. In the group of dogs studied, this was ‘tolerant’. A steeper gradient points to a dominance style that corresponds to ‘despotic,’ while a more gentle gradient indicates ‘relaxed’ or ‘egalitarian’. The steepness of the hierarchy is a measure of an animal’s total dominance success.

http://www.sciencedaily.com  Science Daily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150827083542.htm  Original web page at Science Daily