Fido's tail wags may reveal more than you think

[Buster's Uncle]

Fido's tail wags may reveal more than you think
Associated Press
By MALCOLM RITTER 5 hours ago



In this 2012 image provided by the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Bari, a dog, bottom right, watches a video of the silhouette of another dog wagging its tail to its left. At top right is an inset image of the dog's heart rate while the dog was watching the video. A few years ago, researchers discovered a subtle difference in how dogs wag their tails. When a dog sees something positive, such as its owner, it tends to wags its tail more to its right. The wagging tends to go left when it sees something negative, like an unfamiliar dominant dog. In the Thursday, Oct. 31, 2013 issue of the journal Current Biology, the same Italian researchers report that other dogs pick up on that difference, and it’s reflected in their behavior and even their heart rates. (AP Photo/Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Bari)



NEW YORK (AP) — The way Fido wags his tail might reveal more about him than you know. Just ask another dog.

A few years ago, researchers discovered a subtle difference in how dogs wag their tails. When a dog sees something positive, such as its owner, it tends to wags its tail more to its right. The wagging tends to go left when it sees something negative, like an unfamiliar dominant dog.

Now, the same Italian researchers report that other dogs pick up on that difference, and it's reflected in their behavior and even their heart rates. Experts say the tail-wagging difference appears to be one way that dogs gauge how other dogs will respond to them.

"It's just fascinating that dogs pick up on it," said Evan MacLean, co-director of Duke University's Canine Cognition Center. For humans, he said, "it's a difficult thing to see."

MacLean was not involved with the study, reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

Giorgio Vallortigara of the University of Trento in Italy, an author of the study, said Fido is not deliberately sending a message. Instead, the tail-wagging behavior stems from how different emotional cues activate different parts of the brain, he said in an email.

For the experiment, Vallortigara and co-authors used videos of a dog or its silhouette, wagging its tail mostly to one side or the other, or not wagging at all. They showed the videos to 43 dogs, including such breeds as Rottweilers, beagles, boxers, border collies and German shepherds as well as mongrels.

When the dog in the video wagged mostly to its left, the sign of a negative response, observer dogs tended to have faster heartbeats than when it wagged the other way or not at all. Their behavior also indicated a higher degree of stress.

Alexandra Horowitz, who studies mental abilities of dogs at Barnard College in New York, said that the wagging difference is probably not a primary signal between Fido and Rover in daily life, but it may play a minor role.

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Online:

Current Biology: http://www.cell.com/current-biology


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[Buster's Uncle]

Tail-Wag Direction Matters for Dogs
LiveScience.com
By Megan Gannon, News Editor  4 hours ago



Wolves transitioned into dogs — right down to the floppy ears and wagging tails — as they adapted



Tail wagging could convey more meaning among dogs than previously thought.

Dogs have different emotional responses to their peers depending on the direction of a tail-wag, a new study found. Seeing a fellow dog swing its tail to the right keeps canines relaxed, while a wag to the left side of the dog's body seems to induce stress, the researchers say.

For their study, a group of researchers recruited 43 pet dogs of various breeds. The animals were outfitted with a vest that monitored their heart rates, and they were shown videos of other dogs either wagging their tails to the left or to the right. [7 Surprising Health Benefits of Dog Ownership]

The pets that watched left-side tail wagging behaved more anxiously and their heart rate sped up, the researchers said, while the dogs that watched one of their peers wag their tail to the right stayed cool; they even began to approach the dog on the screen, suggesting they saw the right-side wagging as a signal of companionship, the researchers said.

But right-left tail wags may not be a form of secret dog language, the researchers say. They think the direction of tail wagging — and other dogs' responses to it — could arise from automatic responses rooted the different hemispheres of the canine brain.

Just like the left and right sides of the brain in humans are thought to control different emotions and behaviors, the direction of wagging might match hemispheric activation, explained study researcher Giorgio Vallortigara of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences of the University of Trento in Italy.

"In other words, a dog looking to a dog wagging with a bias to the right side — and thus showing left-hemisphere activation as if it was experiencing some sort of positive/approach response — would also produce relaxed responses," Vallortigara said in a statement.

"In contrast, a dog looking to a dog wagging with a bias to the left — and thus showing right-hemisphere activation as if it was experiencing some sort of negative/withdrawal response — would also produce anxious and targeting responses as well as increased cardiac frequency," Vallortigara added. "That is amazing, I think."

Vallortigara and colleagues say understanding these responses could help improve dog welfare, and perhaps even help develop new strategies to keep them calm at the vet.

The research was detailed today (Oct. 31) in the journal Current Biology.


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