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An attempt to test whether dogs (Canis familiaris) show increased preference towards humans who match their behaviour

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Abstract

Studies suggest that being mimicked can positively affect human social interactions, not only in adults but also in children and even in individuals with atypical social competences. Outside of the human species, however, little is still known about this so-called ‘social glue function’ of mimicry; with only two studies—both on primates—testing whether other animals can show increased affiliation towards humans who mimic them. The present paper provides two pioneer studies on whether dogs—a domesticated species strongly attached to humans—show increased preference toward humans who display matching behaviour (walking). Results from both studies, including several tests, evidenced no preference of dogs for the human experimenter who matched the dogs’ walk. Methodological issues are discussed and a number of new routes of experimentation are proposed that we hope will prove valuable for future studies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the owners of the dogs tested in the present study and to Mariana Filipe, Alexandra Valongueiro, Daniel Martins, Katrin Schumann, Alex Taylor and Lola Bräuer for their valuable help during data collection. We also thank Anika Rütz and Melanie Henschel for inter-observer reliability coding and Annette Günzel for creating Fig. 1. Special thanks goes also to Sebastião Castro Lemos and Quinta do Côvo. The authors also thank Roger Mundry for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and Russell Gray for financial support. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the contribution of two anonymous referees whose comments significantly improved this manuscript.

This observational study adhered to the Guidelines for the use of Animals in Research of Germany.

Funding

The study was partly financed by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Russell Gray).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Karine Silva and Juliane Bräuer contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciências do Comportamento, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar, Universidade do Porto, Rua de Jorge Viterbo, 228, 4050-330, Porto, Portugal

    Karine Silva & Liliana de Sousa

  2. Max-Planck-Institut for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

    Juliane Bräuer & Julia Belger

  3. Escola Superior de Educação Paula Frassinetti, Porto, Portugal

    Mariely Lima

  4. Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Robert O’Hara

  5. Department for Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Claudio Tennie

  6. Department of General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, FSU, Jena, Germany

    Juliane Bräuer, Julia Belger & Theresa Epperlein

Authors
  1. Karine Silva
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  2. Juliane Bräuer
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  3. Liliana de Sousa
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  4. Mariely Lima
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  5. Robert O’Hara
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  6. Julia Belger
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  7. Theresa Epperlein
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  8. Claudio Tennie
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karine Silva.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The Doglab of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has a general approval for conducting non-invasive studies of dog human interactions. There is no particular certificate number.

Informed consent

All dog owners signed a consent form that their dogs participated in the research here presented.

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Silva, K., Bräuer, J., de Sousa, L. et al. An attempt to test whether dogs (Canis familiaris) show increased preference towards humans who match their behaviour. J Ethol 38, 223–232 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-020-00644-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10164-020-00644-4

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