Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 23, Issue 22, Pages 2279-2282Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.09.027
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Funding
- Waltham Fondation
- ERG Advanced Grant [PREMESOR ERC-2011-ADG_20110406]
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Left-right asymmetries in behavior associated with asymmetries in the brain are widespread in the animal kingdom [1], and the hypothesis has been put forward that they may be linked to animals' social behavior [2, 3]. Dogs show asymmetric tail-wagging responses to different emotive stimuli [41 the outcome of different activation of left and right brain structures controlling tail movements to the right and left side of the body. A crucial question, however, is whether or not dogs detect this asymmetry. Here we report that dogs looking at moving video images of conspecifics exhibiting prevalent left- or right-asymmetric tail wagging showed higher cardiac activity and higher scores of anxious behavior when observing left- rather than right-biased tail wagging. The finding that dogs are sensitive to the asymmetric tail expressions of other dogs supports the hypothesis of a link between brain asymmetry and social behavior and may prove useful to canine animal welfare theory and practice.
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