Animal Cognition

, Volume 17, Issue 6, pp 1401–1405 | Cite as

Gaze-following behind barriers in domestic dogs

Short Communication
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Abstract

Although gaze-following abilities have been demonstrated in a wide range of species, so far no clear evidence has been available for dogs. In the current study, we examined whether dogs follow human gaze behind an opaque barrier in two different contexts, in a foraging situation and in a non-foraging situation (food involved vs. food not involved in the situation). We assumed that dogs will spontaneously follow the human gaze and that the foraging context will have a positive effect on dogs’ gaze-following behaviour by causing an expectation in the dogs that food might be hidden somewhere in the room and might be communicated by the experimenter. This expectation presumably positively affects their motivational and attentional state. Here, we report that dogs show evidence of spontaneous gaze-following behind barriers in both situations. According to our findings, the dogs gazed earlier at the barrier in the indicated direction in both contexts. However, as we expected, the context also has some effect on dogs’ gaze-following behaviour, as more dogs gazed behind the barrier in the indicated direction in the foraging situation. The present results also support the idea that gaze-following is a characteristic skill in mammals which may more easily emerge in certain functional contexts.

Keywords

Gaze-following Dogs Inter-specific communication 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The research described here was supported by the European Union (NEST 012787, LIREC-215554) and by the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group (01 031). We are grateful to Beatriz Sanjurjo and Evelin Dombay for their invaluable assistance in the research and to all the owners who participated in this study for their support throughout the experiments. We are also very grateful to Dr. Wayne Holmes for correcting the English of the manuscript.

Supplementary material

10071_2014_754_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (38 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (PDF 38 kb)

Supplementary material 2 (MP4 27091 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Amandine Met
    • 1
  • Ádám Miklósi
    • 2
  • Gabriella Lakatos
    • 3
  1. 1.Université de Rennes 1Rennes CedexFrance
  2. 2.Department of EthologyEötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
  3. 3.MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research GroupBudapestHungary

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