Why your dog is genetically engineered to love you
This story shows the science behind the human “best friend”
Dogs are very sociable, affectionate and faithful indiscriminately because they possess genes that activate this behavior, which is, in turn, the same as those that wolves lack. The mere fact that we do not share a common language with dogs means that there is more and more research willing to decode through the scientific method why dogs are the way they are and act the way they do.
Clues
Psychologist Clive Wyne of Arizona State University is an expert on canine behavior and author of Dog is Love, one of the latest books to address the meaning and origin of hyper sociability in dogs. Until now, most published studies have focused on praising dogs’ ability to communicate with their owners rather than their ability to bond. For Wyne, what makes the human-dog relationship so successful is the love they feel for us and, in turn, the trait that sets them apart from other species.
Findings. In the book How Dogs Love Us, author Gregory Berns explained the conclusions he drew after subjecting his dog to several MRIs. The images revealed that the area of the brain that lights up when it hears the voice of its owners is the same area that is activated when they like someone or something. Thus, one of the conclusions drawn by Berns in the book points to hyper sociability as being responsible for making dogs more emotionally and cognitively alert.
Williams-Beuren syndrome
According to this study from Princeton University, the genome of dogs has some genes related to the genetic disorder present in humans and known as chromosome 7 monosomy or Williams Syndrome.
This coincidence was the key to explaining the emotional response present in dogs. Reason? One of the symptoms of the syndrome is indiscriminate friendship. Thus, after analyzing the wolf genome for the same genes, they realized that there was no trace of them and that, therefore, the hyper sociability of the dogs was genetically predisposed.
Considering that the dog became a subspecies of the wolf — Canis lupus — after being domesticated by humans, the difference in the genetic material of both is the result of thousands of years of training and environmental factors.
More differences
Researcher Brian Hare also concluded that dogs follow the instructions of humans more easily than wolves, among other things, because wolves have an innate ability to relate. According to his evidence, a dog can be comfortable with people if it shares 90 minutes a day for some of its first 14 weeks of life.
In contrast, to create a similar bond, wolves need to have contact with people for 24 hours over several months.
Affection yes, words meh. The above results which highlight the emotional side of dogs, in turn, are supported by other research we talked about a few weeks ago. After analyzing the behavior of 72 dogs that had contact with a person in three different ways: while being petted, talked to or ignored, they observed that the dogs are just as indifferent when talked to as when they are ignored.
Thus, even though the process of domestication carried out 8,000 years ago has borne fruit in the dog genome, for the time being, they continue to be uninterested in listening to what we have to say to them. They prefer us to pet them and keep quiet.
I hope it has been helpful and any input or constructive criticism is very welcome. I would also appreciate it if you liked to share this story.
