Study: Dogs don’t reciprocate food sharing

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dog behavior, Dogs

Food has long been the currency of the 10,000-year-old friendship between humans and dogs. The rapport started with our ancestors sharing food with wolves, and today, we show our love to our canine pets with treats and train them with goodies as motivation. However close the bond is between humans and dogs, though, food sharing may just be a one-way street: Dogs don’t seem to pay back the hand that feeds them.

That lack of reciprocated food sharing in dogs is the key finding of a study published today in PLOS One by dog researcher Jim McGetrick and his team.

Link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dogs-dont-return-favor-after-strangers-feed-them-180978170/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia

I hope they didn’t spend too much to figure out something most dog owners already knew 🙂

Why do dogs do “zoomies”?

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dog behavior, Dogs, zoomies

One moment a pup is peacefully eating kibble, and the next it’s running around the house like there’s a fire burning under its tail. These episodes of “zoomies” last for up to several minutes, but they can feel much longer when a dog bulldozes through a crowded home.

So, why do dogs, cats and other pets dash around for no apparent reason?

“They’re just having fun,” said José Arce, president-elect of the American Veterinary Medical Association. These bursts of energy, technically called frenetic random activity periods (FRAPs), are natural and seen in many domesticated and wild animal species.

https://www.livescience.com/why-pet-dogs-cats-race-around.html

Dogs negotiating a fence fight

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dog behavior, Dogs

Dogs signaling each other with their tails and body posture just before a fence fight. They each raise their tails until they agree to start. They run back and forth along the fence barking and growling. It’s not a real fight, they cannot bit each other.

Dogs and wolves have a sense of fairness

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dog behavior, Dogs

link: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40205808

Another scientific study showing that dogs and people have some thought processes in common.

The sense of fair play is an important human trait, but new research suggests that it’s a key behaviour for dogs and wolves as well.

In tests, if one animal was given a more substantial reward when performing a task, the other one downed tools completely.

It had been felt that this aversion to unfairness was something that dogs had learned from humans.

But the tests with wolves suggest that this predates domestication of dogs.

Bathing Suzie (rat terrier)

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dog behavior, Dogs, rat terrier

Gary bathing rat terrier Suzie in the kitchen sink. It’s quite convient to bath a small dog in this way. Our labrador retriever just does not fit in the sink 🙂 Suzie found something horribly smelly – to humans – which she rolled in. Yuck. Why? I guess it will remain a canine mystery.