Science Stories | Animal behaviours
Behind the dog head tilt
Finally some answers to an extremely cute behaviour!
“Do you want to go for a walk?” is a sentence that will get a lot of dogs to cock their head, almost as if to figure out if they really just heard the magic word “walk”.
But why do they actually do it? While we don’t know yet, new research headed by PhD student Andrea Sommese provides the first clues to demystifying this cute behaviour.
New research
The research project did not investigate head tilting in general. Rather, they focused on the moment dogs were told a specific toy’s name while being tasked with retrieving said toy from a different room.
Prior to this study, there were three main theories as to why dogs tilt their head: to see us better (having a muzzle in the front of one’s eyes does cause a bit of vision blockage after all), to hear us better (floppy ears are not the most conducive to letting sound in), and as a sign of communication (signalling their focus, for example).
Dogs adept at recalling toys’ names (called “gifted word learners” in the study) tilted their heads a lot more than dogs who have not mastered learning the toys’ names. The authors of the study interpret this as a sign that dogs are reacting to a meaningful word and probably signalling attention, similar to one of the previously mentioned theories.
While there is little data to support it right now, the authors of the study also go one step further and suggest that head tilting could be related to the dog’s processing of information (for example, by linking the word with the image of the toy in their head).
A specialist’s take on head tilting
I interviewed Dr Naomi Harvey, a pet behaviour specialist at Dogs Trust, to learn what her take is on this new research.
Before this new study was published, there were several theories about what head tilting in dogs meant. From focusing on something we said to trying to listen or see better. Most dog owners interpret it as a sign of attention or curiosity.
As a pet behaviour specialist, how have you traditionally interpreted head tilts in dogs? And has this new scientific article changed your views on it?
I have always interpreted head tilting in dogs to be a sign of paying attention to something a person is saying and as part of an attempt to understand them. Anecdotally, dogs I’ve interacted with who do it (including my own rescue dog), tend to do so when I’m saying something in a way that sounds meaningful but might not be. For example, when my tone is high-pitched and fun sounding but I’m not saying words they know, or when I’m saying words that might potentially be meaningful such as a sentence starting with “Do you want …”
Many animals use head tilting when listening to sounds to help pinpoint their location, so it’s always made sense to me that it would be associated with trying to make sense of human speech to see if it might have meaning for them. The results presented by Andrea Sommese and their group support this theory, as they suggest that dogs are more likely to do it when processing sounds that have meaning or relevance to them.
What would you say to new dog owners who wonder why their dogs tilt (or don’t tilt) their heads?
I’m sure there will be many dog owners out there who heard this story, where “gifted word learners” tilt their head more than other dogs and thought “my dog tilts their head, they must be a genius, too”. I wouldn’t want to dissuade them from thinking that; after all, every dog is the best dog, right? But I also don’t think it means your dog isn’t smart if they don’t tilt their heads. All dogs are individuals, and intelligence comes in different forms.
Just like people, dogs will have their own strengths and weaknesses. Some dogs may simply pay more attention to, and be primed to be able to learn, sounds and words better than others, whilst some dogs may learn visual cues better. For example, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the majority of the dogs identified as “gifted word learners” were Border Collies, who have been selectively bred to learn the meaning of and respond to sound cues for herding sheep, which may predispose individuals of this breed to being more likely to head-tilt.
In the new study, the authors link head tilting not only to word recognition but also, to mental processes such as linking the word to the image represented by the word.
Do you think their results support this? And where would you like to see head-tilt research go, moving forward?
It is possible that dogs in this study are linking the word to a mental image of the object it’s linked to; however, we know that not all people see mental images in their minds, so I don’t think we can speculate further on that at this stage.
If I’m thinking “pie in the sky” research, with no limitations, then, an exciting future study would be to use awake fMRI imaging with a dog that is a gifted word learner to see if the visual association cortex areas of the dog’s brain are activated when they hear the name of a known toy and compare that to the dog hearing a meaningless word, or a command like “sit” that shouldn’t (in theory) have a visual representation attached to it. That would help us understand if dogs might associate the word with a visual representation of the object it’s linked to.
If you want to see the head tilting in action, check out this research summary video made by the authors of the research study:
