I don't have a jealous bone in my body, do I Parental Unit? Fabulous photo of me by Rachel Lauren Photography
When some of you humans talk to dogs like babies, or ascribe human emotions like anger, jealousy or even vindictiveness to your four-legged companions, most of you might not have really believed what you were saying, thinking instead that you were really just "anthropomorphizing". But science is catching up to what you knew intuitively, even when you tried to talk yourselves out of it: Dogs (and other animals) have rich emotional lives.
Take a recent peer-reviewed, scientific study discussed in this CNN article, that confirmed dogs at least acted jealous when their owners petted and sweet-talked a stuffed dog. Among their displays of jealousy were barking, trying to get between the toy dog and their owner and even nipping at the offending pooch. These results mirrored those conducted with 6 month old human babies who displayed signs of jealousy when their mothers gave affection to human dolls. What might this mean?
"These results lend support to the hypothesis that jealousy has some 'primordial' form that exists in human infants and in at least one other social species besides humans," the study said.
Say what you will about those other silly canines, but I can tell the difference between a stuffed animal and a real one...although Parental Unit claims I once barked at a statue of a dog. Just for the record, I have no recall of that scenario.
Let us know what you think—do the conclusions of this study surprise you?
When some of you humans talk to dogs like babies, or ascribe human emotions like anger, jealousy or even vindictiveness to your four-legged companions, most of you might not have really believed what you were saying, thinking instead that you were really just "anthropomorphizing". But science is catching up to what you knew intuitively, even when you tried to talk yourselves out of it: Dogs (and other animals) have rich emotional lives.
Take a recent peer-reviewed, scientific study discussed in this CNN article, that confirmed dogs at least acted jealous when their owners petted and sweet-talked a stuffed dog. Among their displays of jealousy were barking, trying to get between the toy dog and their owner and even nipping at the offending pooch. These results mirrored those conducted with 6 month old human babies who displayed signs of jealousy when their mothers gave affection to human dolls. What might this mean?
"These results lend support to the hypothesis that jealousy has some 'primordial' form that exists in human infants and in at least one other social species besides humans," the study said.
Say what you will about those other silly canines, but I can tell the difference between a stuffed animal and a real one...although Parental Unit claims I once barked at a statue of a dog. Just for the record, I have no recall of that scenario.
Let us know what you think—do the conclusions of this study surprise you?
