Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Germany have discovered that humans struggle to predict aggressive behaviour in dogs. Researchers anticipated that, seeing as identifying aggression can help avoid injury or even death, participants would be better at predicting aggressive behaviour.
The new research revealed that people participating in the study could only spot aggressive interaction between two dogs 20 percent of the time.
Theresa Epperlein, one author of the new study, said: “It is possible that we are biased to assume good intentions from other humans and from ‘man’s best friend’.
“Perhaps this bias prevents us from recognizing aggressive situations in these species.”
It also was discovered that humans were no better at predicting the behaviour of other humans than predicting the behaviour of dogs.
The findings of the research showed that further study is needed to understand what verbal and physical cues humans assess when they know an interaction is about to become aggressive.
The research team showed 92 participants 27 video clips of the build-up of interactions between two human children, two dogs and two monkeys.
The animals and children could not communicate with each other verbally, so participants had to read facial expressions and body language to read what was happening.
Researchers then asked half of the participants to categorise the interactions in the clips as either aggressive, neutral or playful.
The other participants were asked what was about to happen next in the clip, for example, if the children or animals were playing or if an attack was about to take place.
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Aggressive interactions were not shown to participants, but rather researchers wanted to know if participants could look out for aggressive signals.
In dogs, this included a stiff body posture, while monkeys would open their mouths wide while children would make sudden movements.
While being playful, dogs would arch their backs in a play bow to signal they wanted to have fun, while monkeys would display playful behaviour in their facial expressions and children would as well by smiling.
Juliane Bräuer, the senior author of the research, said: “Our results underscore the fact that social interactions can often be ambiguous, and suggest that accurately predicting outcomes may be more advantageous than categorizing emotional contexts.”
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The research seems to suggest that dog owners may need better education to understand their pets better and spot signs of aggression in dogs, which could reduce the frequency of dog bites.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) has said that dogs begin to show “increasingly intense behaviours” when aggressive, such as becoming very rigid, guttural barks, growling, showing teeth and quick nips that don’t leave a mark.
The ASPCA say on its website: “Many times, pet parents don’t recognize the warning signs before a bite, so they perceive their dogs as suddenly flying off the handle.
“However, that’s rarely the case. It can be just milliseconds between a warning and a bite, but dogs rarely bite without giving some type of warning beforehand.