A friend or an enemy? Dogs’ reaction to an unfamiliar person showing behavioural cues of threat and friendliness at different times

Dogs and Strangers

Judit Vas, József Topál, Márta Gácsi, Ádám Miklósi, Vilmos Csányi

A friend or an enemy? Dogs’ reaction to an unfamiliar person showing behavioural cues of threat and friendliness at different times

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 94, Issues 1–2, October 2005, Pages 99–115

Abstract

Responsiveness of adult pet dogs (Canis familiaris) to an unfamiliar human was observed in two studies. Subjects were faced with an approaching woman (Stranger) who showed definite signs of friendliness and threat during alternate approaches. Observations consisted of two episodes: the Stranger either approached the dog in normal speed of walk while talking to it and finally petted it gently (Friendly approach episode) or she moved slowly and haltingly and looked steadily into the eyes of the dog without any verbal communication (Threatening approach episode).

In the first study 30 dogs of 19 different breeds were tested in the two episodes in a balanced sequential order. The dogs acted appropriately according to the different human behaviour cues. The order of the Friendly/Threatening approaches had no significant effect on the dogs’ responsivity.

In the second experiment 60 dogs of three breed groups (20 Belgian shepherds, 20 retrievers and 20 sled dogs) were first ‘greeted friendly’ and then approached ‘threateningly’ by the same Stranger. Results show significant breed specific differences in the responsivity when dogs faced an apparent switch of the human behaviour cues. Compared to retrievers and sled dogs, Belgian shepherds more frequently changed their response, showing passive or active avoidance or sign of aggression when approached threateningly.

While sex differences were not found, breed comparisons suggest that selective breeding (i.e. for hunting or shepherd work) influenced the dogs’ sensitivity to human social cues in different ways. Results also support the hypothesis that human influence (domestication) has led to extreme flexibility of the dogs’ situation-relevant behaviour while interacting with an unfamiliar human.

Consistency of dogs’ reactions to threatening cues of an unfamiliar person

Judit Vas, József Topál, Borbála Győri, Ádám Miklósi

Consistency of dogs’ reactions to threatening cues of an unfamiliar person

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 112, Issues 3–4, August 2008, Pages 331–344

Abstract

Reliability is one of the most important aspects of the behaviour observations measuring personality traits in animals. The most fundamental way to test reliability is the assessment of the test–retest consistency. On the other hand, in situations where social interaction between a human participant and the animal subject is at the scope of the study, the behaviour of the humans in the test situation should be restricted by a set of rules. However, if more than one experimenter participates in the observations, the similarity of the behaviour of different persons is an important aspect of the reliability of the study.

In our first study we investigated the consistency of dogs’ behaviour during approach by a person in a friendly and in a threatening way, repeating the test either immediately after the first test or at least 6 months later. We found that the dogs’ sensitivity to the human's behavioural cues in this situation proved to be consistent over repetition when the second test was performed approximately 1 year after the first test, but it was not the case when the time elapsed between test occasions was a few seconds. The detailed analysis indicated that dogs performing extreme behaviour (friendly or threatening) tended to show more conservative responses than dogs showing intermediate reactions when the stranger approached threateningly. Nonetheless, the reaction of the dogs failed to be in accordance with the opinion of the owners about the dogs’ behaviour in similar situations in everyday life.

In the second study we examined the consistency of the dogs’ behaviour in the same situation when confronted with two different unfamiliar persons immediately after each other. The consistency of the dogs’ response to the two experimenters was found to be reliably high.

In sum, this test procedure proved to be reliable enough to be a valuable measure of a definite part of the personality characters of dogs.

‘The bone is mine’: affective and referential aspects of dog growls

Tamás Faragó, Péter Pongrácz, Friederike Range, Zsófia Virányi, Ádám Miklósi

‘The bone is mine’: affective and referential aspects of dog growls

Animal Behaviour, Volume 79, Issue 4, April 2010, Pages 917–925

Abstract

A number of species are considered to use functionally referential signals such as alarm calls or food-related vocalizations. However, this particular function of communicative interaction has not previously been found in canids. We provide the first experimental indication that domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, rely on context-dependent signals during interspecific agonistic encounters. We recorded several sequences of growls from dogs in three different contexts: during play, guarding a bone from another dog, and reacting to a threatening stranger. We analysed the acoustic structure of the growls and additionally performed playback tests in a seminatural food-guarding situation. We found that play growls differed acoustically from the other two (agonistic) types of growls, mainly in their fundamental frequencies and formant dispersions. Results of the playback experiment showed that food-guarding growls deterred other dogs from taking away a seemingly unattended bone more effectively than growls recorded in the threatening stranger situation. We ruled out an effect of the signaller's body weight on the subjects' responses. These results provide the first evidence of context specificity of agonistic vocalizations in the dog. We discuss the possible aspects of honesty and deception through acoustic modulation of growls.