The belief (often inherent and subconscious) that humans are the most significant species on earth; that humans and human experience is best, more important, of higher value, and more moral than that of animals; assessment of reality through a human-centric lens.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
The act of attributing human experience (e.g., mental state, emotions, conscious choice, logical thought) to non-human animals.
BIOPHILIA
The inherent human tendency to want to connect in an empathetic manner with non-human living things.
SENTIENCE
“The ability of a living thing to feel, perceive, and experience subjectively.” (Source) This can include but is not limited to nor does not necessarily contain: emotions, self-awareness, logical and procedural reasoning, conscious thought.
SAPIENCE
In humans, often defined as “wisdom, or the ability (…) to act with appropriate judgement, (…) may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.” (Source).
In animals, the conference of ‘personhood’ to a nonhuman; accompanied by the implicit assumption of anthropocentric worldview; experiences of the non-human animal assumed to be analogous to those of humans under the same stimuli.
Training / Behavior Modification Terms:
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING = Developing an association between initially neutral stimuli and biologically important stimuli (google Pavlov’s dogs). E.g. Dogs salivating in anticipation of food.
OPERANT CONDITIONING = An animal’s behavior operates on the environment to produce a good, bad, or neutral result. Animal learns from successes and failures. E.g. Positive and negative reinforcement.
HABITUATION = Getting used to a stimulus that once elicited a greater response by the animal.E.g. A horse becoming less fearful of traffic noises after it has been turned out in a field next to a road.
SENSITIZATION = Becoming more responsive to a once neutral stimulus. E.g. A horse becoming fearful of traffic after a negative experience with it.
POSITIVE (X): Adding something to increase or decrease a behavior.
NEGATIVE (X): Removing something to increase or decrease a behavior.
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT = A stimulus is added to reward a desired behavior. Encourages that behavior to happen more frequently. This is the basis of clicker training. E.g. dog sits on command, receives a treat.
NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT = A stimulus is removed to reward a desired behavior. Encourages that behavior to happen more frequently. Often used in terms of scary thing going way or an unpleasant stimulus stopping. E.g. squeezing a horse forward, stop squeezing once it is moving OR backing away from an animal that is allowing you to be close even though it is uncomfortable.
POSITIVE PUNISHMENT = A stimulus is added as a consequence for a behavior. Encourages the behavior to happen less frequently. Often used to “discipline” animals for “doing something wrong.” E.g. using the whip on a horse as a punishment for bucking.
NEGATIVE PUNISHMENT = A stimulus is removed as a consequence for a behavior. Encourages the behavior to happen less frequently. Is not necessarily “bad” – often represents “natural consequences”. E.g. removing yourself from play when a dog is being too rough.
(behavior and training terms partially sourced from @operationvet).
Waltz:
So, this is really interesting to me. A lot of cats will ‘chatter’ their teeth when watching prey animals, and it’s commonly considered a sign of arousal and interest in prey they know they can’t reach. This looks to me like it might be a manifestation of that chattering, but with a vocalization at the same time.
But, with meowing being mostly a communication strategy with humans, I wonder if this is a behavior that only happens when there’s a person present. Because then it might be like, a meow because the cat knows it can’t reach the prey and is trying to communicate something to the human about it. That’s total speculation on my part, but I’d love to find out if this happens when people aren’t actively in the room.
A fantastic diagram of lots of the facial expressions of stress we talk about here a lot! Found on Facebook.
I think it’s important to take context and breed into account when you try to interpret canine body language?
Lio and many other greyhounds chatter their teeth when they’re happy or excited. I’ve only hear Lio chatter his teeth when he’s anticipating a treat or when I come home after being away for awhile. He gets puffy cheeks when he’s sleepy being his breathing slows down and his facial muscles are relaxed. Also, apparently some greyhounds grin when they’re happy? I’ve only ever seen Lio grin before a snap or lunge though so I only associate it with negative feelings when it comes to him.
Yes, greyhounds are huge weirdos! breed and context are important. This is a nice graphic though and I wish it had been posted at the shelter I worked at for the more inexperienced volunteers and staff. Might’ve prevented some issues.
The “clown mouth” is kind of standard for bully breeds as well. I have mixed feelings on graphics like these. On one hand they are a nice guide for taking care around a stray dog or a dog in a stressful situation, but on the other hand I hate it when people try to use them to look at photos of people’s pets and accuse them of being stressed. Context is very important, as well as taking into account breed traits. E.g. when Rudy is out in the yard and his ears are alert, he’s just being alert. However if I was approaching a strange dog and they had that expression, I’d be cautious and not go right up to and handle.
This also applies to basenjis. Ears back/flat is a sign of “OMFG, I’M SO HAPPY!” And ears alert…that’s just what it is. They’re alert of their surroundings. And the brows furrowed, that’s just normal. LOVE their wrinkles. :3
We’ve pretty much decided that the best way to tell of Cora in enjoying pets is to assume that the more nervous she looks, the better. She’ll side whale eye while licking her lips and if you stop petting her she will MUG YOU for more pets.
Kaeda does the SAME THING. She’ll do the tongue flick. If I stop, she looks at me and sometimes will even paw me to continue! hahaha
Also with German Shepherds their ears go back and loose and I’ve heard it called “Happy Seal Head” and it means they’re happy to see you, and it’s quite different from the ears pinned back thing.
Like, this looks like an all-round bad situation, right?
Context is everything. He was actually ecstatic to meet a person he lived with who he hadn’t seen yet that day but met on the driveway on our way out, but canine body language is one of the hardest things to read because every dog and breed is so different.
Even hackles can be mildly unreliable, though I wouldn’t fuck with a strange do with hackles up from shoulder to tail.
I guess you should get to know your own dog, and don’t tangle with a strange dog displaying any potential stress signals, regardless of whether they’re actually stress signals or not.
Okay, so this is a thread of commentary I want to talk about, because as a professional in the field it makes me want to tear my hair out.
This infographic isn’t misleading – it’s very, very basic, and it’s very, very accurate. This is posted for the new people who really have no visual context to even start from about what behaviors can indicate stress. I guess I shouldn’t have posted this without more context – because, as you said, context is the important thing. All behavior must be taken in context to be understood at all. As a professional, working with brand new clients, this is an infographic I would give them because it tells them where to start looking
What is important when looking at stress behavior is that that behavior is looked for in terms of change. A naturally prick-eared dog isn’t necessarily stressed if his ears are up – but if they prick hard forwards, stiffly, that’s stress. A wrinkly dog having soft folds of skin isn’t unusual, but he still might be stressed if they suddenly get super tense and deep and are simultaneous with other signs of stress or overall body tension. You can’t discount a signal by saying ‘oh well my dog’s body already does that so obviously he’s fine all the time this isn’t a valid signal’. Canine body language is canine body languge, and it can be subtle or different depending on the dog, but there’s not an animal out there that just “speaks a different language”.
If you have a dog for whom some of these aren’t stress signals, and you know that, great. At the same time, for every person I work with who know that their dog isn’t stressed, I have three more who say “Oh, Fluffy does this all the time but he’s fine!” and then I come in for a consult and Fluffy is stressed out of his eyeballs. So if your dog is displaying stress signals “a lot, but he’s fine” – maybe you should try to figure out why. Maybe it’s just that as much as Fluffy likes being pet by you, he’s nervous when you loom over him or touch his face. So then you could just change your posture or pet his flank instead, and you’d have solved the problem and made your dog more comfortable.
The thing that really, really bothers me about this is the fact that you’ve got people discounting very scary signals like ‘whale eye’ because they ‘see them all the time’. That tells me right there that the person commenting doesn’t know how to accurately identify the behavior that the term describes, which leads to a very slippery slope of ignoring signals when dogs are being pushed too far because since they’re ‘common’ people just ignore it. ‘Whale eye’ is is a super serious stiff, terrified look out of the corner of the eye while trying to move as far away from the object of the gaze – it’s not that thing that happens when your dog looks at you sideways. I’ve talked about this before, but what’s important to quantify is that it’s considered almost as serious as snapping/snarling in the behavioral evaluations I’m part of. If it happens “all the time” you’re just straight up incorrect. That’s. So. Dangerous. If you can’t call behavior accurately when you’re talking about concepts that drastically important, don’t use those phrases – because that gets people hurt, or dogs put down. (Same thing with the ‘did you see teeth’ or did your dog ‘snap’ at that other dog dichotomy I talk about a lot. Accuracy is important).
When people start assuming that their dog’s stress signals aren’t indicative of even minor moments of stress in an other positive situation, that gets bad quickly. You get really reactive dogs somethings who have learned that their people will ignore any small stress signals and that they have to snap or growl to get the human to listen, because we’ve learned to discount and write off their polite body language of ‘I’m not comfortable”. This is also where you get the idea that toy dogs should get shaking all the time, having seal ears, lip licking constantly… guess what? That’s not normal. People ignore stress signals in small dogs because we’ve decided as a culture we can, and the dogs eventually just give up and deal with being towed into every situations and manhandled… but they’re still showing signs of stress the whole time.
So yes, this infographic is basic, and requires context as does everything involving behavior, which I stress a lot .It’s also the best one out there I’ve seen because it effectively isolates the specific, subtle signs of stress everyone ignores. It’s the type of thing we get asked for a lot – visuals to help out the less dog savvy folk. So please, don’t chew it to shreds and be nasty because you’re sure that your dog doesn’t do that (trust me, he does) or because what you’ve learned on the internet has told you it’s okay to want to find wiggle room in behavioral assessments where it’s not accurate or appropriate to have it. That sort of commentary being propagated is literally why I have a job – fixing it.
A couple of comments based on discussions I’ve seen:
“Clown face” is different than the wide mouthed common bully face in its tension. You’re looking for lip tension and stiff wrinkles, combined with a spatulate and/or stiff tongue. Bullies will often do a similar happy or overheated face but it’s much more soft and floppy.
Dogs chattering in response to prey is still a stress response. The problem is that stress is always assumed to equate to negative things, when sometimes it’s a sign of arousal. (Eustress is a thing – stress can be good or bad, it’s just often more commonly thought of as a negative). A greyhound chattering at a squirrel is in a state of stress, especially if he’s restrained and knows he can’t go after it. Is he miserable? No. But it does tell you he’s aroused and distracted and more likely to react instead of focus on the handler.
I have not read a single paper that does anything but debunk the concept of canines smiling like primates, nor have a met a single professional or academic in ethology or canine science who believes it is anything but a layman’ misinterpretation. Smiling is a human behavior, and the lip movements we use are singularly primate. Dogs do not interpret lip tension and exposed teeth as affiliate in their own species-typical behavior, and therefore have no reason to display it as a referential behavior describing their own internal state. There is no level of behavioral mimicry from interacting with humans that would cause that. The smile behavior happens from stress, from random things, and from training – but not because the dog is happy. Canines do not smile like humans. QED
Jeez, okay. Anthropomorphism at it’s finest. Let’s start by remembering that dogs can’t really experience guilt because they can’t connect the current state of reprimand with their past actions. (No, really).
Notice the dog starts the entire video with it’s ears back and face a little bit tense – probably uncertain of what’s going on, definitely a little unsure/uncomfortable about stuff. The guy intensifies his stare and the dog looks away and down (0:08) – a non-threat signal, because direct face-to-face interaction and eye contact is aggressive in dog language. By breaking away, the dog is trying to diffuse that.
The dog then climbs into his lap, and I’m honestly not sure why, but the body language is still very uncomfortable. Hunched body, possible erection, head directly to chest. This still looks like appeasement behavior, and maybe behavior that’s been rewarded before. Notice how he’s also keeping from facing the person with the camera – that’s probably part of the discomfort here, a camera being so close. Not sure what’s up with all the face-rubbing.
The dog then pulls back, and the guy holds onto his paws and stares him in the face- you can see his ears are still a little back. He holds the gaze a moment and then lip-licks and looks away to diffuse things. There’s lots of pawing behavior and lip-licking going on as he’s held away from the human, and then allowed to cuddle in again.
I’m not sure what’s going on, honestly, but it’s definitely not a ‘begging for forgiveness’ or anything to do with guilt. The dog seems uncomfortable and is either giving off odd appeasement signals or looking for tactile interactions with the human by crawling into his lap.
Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.
Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:
The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.
Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.
When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.
Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.
What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?
Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?
The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?
Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.
Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?
It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.
But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.
It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.
An adorable rat not spreading the plague and hugging a tiny teddy bear. Much empathy.
After doing a bit of research and talking to a couple more knowledable people I’ve learned that Nic came from a horrible “wolfdog breeder” here in AL. They’re known for mistreating their animals as well as their customers. Nic’s mother is a very very low-content wolfdog with some Tamaskan in her history. I believe this is where he got some of his odd and somewhat wolfy traits. I think he’s too low to even consider him a low/no content wolfdog but it is in his recent history making the cause of some of his traits a bit mote clear.
He has a lot of emotional issues either from abuse from his previous owner or his terrible time as a pup there at that breeder. They were basically a puppy mill so I know he was not treated well there. Hopefully it’s not so ingrained in him that he won’t ever fully relax here with me. We’ll have to wait and see but I hope he comes around, even if it takes him a while.
If i may give you a piece of advice regarding dog behaviour. You may already know but dogs usually mirror the behavior of the “dominant” in a pack, in your case: you. The best way to have a relaxed dog is to be yourself extremely relaxed, especially in stressful situations. And to never pet the dog to reassure him, because petting is usually seen as a reward for a good behavior. You’d tell him"good boy, your stressed attitude is the right one". The best way to sooth a dog is to be calm. Well good luck with this amazing dog, I hope he’ll recover soon! (And don’t hesitate to see a professional dog trainer in whom you trust!)
Thank you, I appreciate your advice. I do agree with you that being calm around a dog is the best way to keep a dog calm and show him when it is okay to be calm vs. stressed, but the whole “pack dominance” idea does not apply to dogs(or wolves for that matter).
Dogs will not believe they are the “alpha”. That is an idea that doesn’t even apply to what we now know about wolves in the wild. Natural wild wolf packs don’t have ranks, they don’t consistently compete with each other to take over the pack and be the so called “alpha”. This only applies to artificially composed packs, i.a. in zoos, where there are no natural leaders. Instead, in wild packs, there is a natural pack composition: a lone male wolf joins up with a lone female wolf, they mate and then this breeding pair automatically becomes the “leading” pair of their pack, which is basically just a family – comparable to human families.
When talking about dogs: “Dominance” is the most misunderstood word used to describe dog behavior. It stems from research on captive wolves published in the ’60s and ’70s. While the information may be accurate for the artificial grouping of wolves in captivity, its application to wild wolves and the domesticated dog is outdated.
Despite new research, the concept that wolves and their close relative, the dog, vie for dominance within a pack simply won’t go away. With the notion that an animal is in constant pursuit of obtaining the top position, any aggressive behavior can be misinterpreted as “dominance”. As a result, it makes sense that well-meaning pet owners accept physical force as a way to discipline an animal behaving in a “dominant” manner. After all, that’s what wolves do, right?
Actually, no, not at all! Most of the time, wolf packs are made up of a breeding male and female, and their offspring. They are related, intact animals that use ritualistic displays to communicate and avoid aggression. If there was constant fighting among the pack, there would be no energy to hunt nor motivation to work as a team. Dogs evolved from a wolf-like ancestor to fill a different niche than their wild counterparts. They learned to scavenge and live alongside humans, not compete.
Sorry for spewing so much information, lol. I hope it didn’t come off as rude, that was not my intent in any way, shape, or form. The whole “dominance theory” is just a big pet peeve of mine and I like to throw out facts about it when I can. There are many better ways to train your dog and many resources out there that aren’t built around that theory.
I wanted to share this info on this blog as well. I have shared it before but I like to bring up the dominance theory when I can.
Not exactly a purpose, but a lot of teenage behaviour is connected to the fact that their brains in a big reorganization process. That’s why teens exhibit so many behaviour that make the onlooker go ‘the fuck, kid’.
Plus there are hormone rushes and a lot of behaviour being exhibited for the first time (including all the ‘impressive people to flirt with them’ stuff) and that accordingly is more trial and error than any sensible idea.
So it’s not that the behaviour itself is a purpose, it’s a side effect. Much like babies putting everything into their mouth even things that could kill them.
PiraticOctopus 