Have you ever wondered if your dog knew who you were—or by coincidence did it come running to the correct owner? Dogs are a species that comes in contact the closest with humans and they require the ability to recognize humans.
In a study published by Animal Cognition, researchers have suggested that dogs (Canis familiaris) are able to recognize human faces, however conclusive evidence has yet been found. There were two experiments done to test how well dogs were able to recognize their owners. The method of these experiments are as follows: In experiment 1, there were 32 owners (27 women, 5 men). There were 32 pet dogs (18 females, 14 males). The owners and dogs were recruited through advertisements in the park, veterinary clinics, and the University of Padua. The dogs had to be living with their current owners for at least six months. In experiment 2, there were 32 dogs (19 females, 13 males). There were 32 owners (28 women, 4 men). The criterion was the same as for experiment 1. None of the dogs or owners took place in more than one experiment.
In the first experiment, it was tested whether the dogs were able to recognize humans by using facial recognition and information from the head region. To test this effectively, the dogs were presented with limited visibility of their owner’s head and a stranger’s head. The presentations occurred through optimal and suboptimal vision. When the dogs approached their owners more times than hypothesized was considered evidence of recognition. This occurred only in the optimal condition. In the second experiment, alterations of visibility was tested to see what accounted for the dog’s inability to recognize. It was found that the dogs approached the owner more frequently than hypothesized if the outer head contours were made visible, but not if the heads were frontally positioned or evenly illuminated. From these studies it was observed that male dogs were slightly better at recognition than female dogs. It was concluded that dogs are able to recognize human faces, however, outer face elements are necessary for this task to be completed.
Although we do not know the information that dogs use to recognize their owners, using one’s face is the first place to consider. Dogs possess specific cortical areas that activate when they look at human faces (Cuaya et al.2016 and are adept at extracting complex information from faces, such as the emotional content of expressions (Albuquerque et al.2016 Nagasawa et al. 2011). The results of this study show that it does not matter whether the owner is male or female, but rather how much information is made available to the dog. From these findings it is safe to say that your dog will be able to recognize you the next time it is time to leave from the park!
References
Albuquerque N, Guo K, Wilkinson A, Savalli C, Otta E, Mills D (2016) Dogs recognize dog and human emotions. Biol Lett 12:20150883. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2015.0883
Cuaya LV, Hernández-Pérez R, Concha L (2016) Our faces in the dog’s brain: functional imaging reveals temporal cortex activation during perception of human faces. PLoS ONE 11(3):e0149431. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0149431
Brittany Simmons
October 11, 2017 — 6:10 pm
This is definitely reassuring to know that my girl knows me and comes to me because she knows me. It is interesting what portions of the head are required for our dogs to be able to adequately recognize us. I’d love to see where these studies are pushed further to maybe the other senses.
Jazz Stephens
October 12, 2017 — 1:45 pm
Love this article! I always assumed that dogs would be able to recognize me, but it never occurred to me that they might be using cues other than sight, such as smell or hearing, to identify their owners. I would like to see more experiments done focusing on those senses. Not only would it give us a better idea of how dogs learn, but the idea of a blind-folded dog (in a safe area) sounds hilarious.