A nose for holding your eye
If your labrador is not making eye contact, it might not be because it’s feeling guilty about snaffling the biscuits when you weren’t looking. It could just be because it’s a labrador.
A study has found that dogs with longer noses are less likely to look you in the eye. In contrast, those with flatter faces are far more likely to make irresistible puppy dog eyes at you – a finding that could explain the popularity of pugs and French bulldogs.
In the co-evolution of dog-human relations, eye contact has been a crucial skill. When humans bond, they look each other in the eyes. When dogs became domesticated, they used the same trick to gain our affection.
This means that eye contact ‘‘plays a fundamental role in dog-human relationships’’, according to a team of Hungarian scientists writing in the journal Scientific Reports.
Past research has shown that holding eye contact raises oxytocin levels in both the dog and its owner, showing its value in bonding for both of them. But not all dogs are so good at it.
As they age, all dogs get less proficient at holding your gaze – either because their visual processing skills diminish or because they just care less. Eye contact skills also seem to vary by breed.
The scientists investigated one factor that might explain it: not the breed itself, so much as the nose length.
When a dog has eyes on the side of its head, it can see over a wider range. This
is useful in some ways, but what it sacrifices is concentrated focus in the centre of its vision. Such long-nosed dogs are also more likely to be distracted by what is going on around them.
To test this theory, the scientists subjected 130 dogs to a test, recording how long it took them to make eye contact with a stranger, and correlating that to the ratio of nose length to head width.
After 15 seconds, about 80 per cent of those with the longest noses had looked the scientist in the eye, compared with
90 per cent of those with the faces.
The researchers also found a secondary difference that seemed to depend on the role the dog was bred for. Sheepdogs, bred to follow visual clues, did comparatively better. Dachshunds, bred to follow auditory cues and dive into burrows, did comparatively worse.
‘‘Dogs with shorter noses may be more experienced in making eye contact,’’ said Zsofia Bognar, from the Department of Ethology at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest.
flattest