“Are you copying me?!: Dogs synchronize their walking pace with ours”

When you are walking along the sidewalk taking your pet dog for a walk, I bet you are most likely yanking them by their leash or they are dragging you around to chase squirrels. But what happens without the leash in an open outdoor area? A lot of you probably would not have  much faith in your dog to stay close and walk with you. However, studies show that maybe you should! Dogs hold strong affiliative bonds with their humans which can lead to behavioral synchronization that can be very easily seen while indoors. When your dog follows you around the house, sits down when you sit, lays down when you lay down, or eats when you eat, chances are that you are observing behavioral synchronization. This particular experiment looked at how well dogs would sync their behaviour with their owner’s while their owner acted upon specific conditions given to them.

In Maisons-Laffitte, France in 2017, 3 scientists named Charlotte Duranton, Thierry Bedossa, and Florence Gaunet wanted to effectively test how well 36 different pet dogs would sync their actions to different actions that their owners carried out. They let the dogs roam freely for 15 minutes in an open outdoor space in the presence of their owner. During the experiment, the owners used a smartphone app hooked up to an earpiece that beeped when it was time to change each condition. The three conditions, walking for 10 seconds, fast walking for 10 seconds, and staying still for 10 seconds were randomized in order for each owner-dog pair. The owners were instructed to not show any emotion, talk to their dogs, or look at them in order to keep results consistent and unbiased. The experimenter recorded each trial with a camera and later recorded the distance between the dog and their owner, the time they spent sitting still, the time they spent trotting, the time they spent cantering, and the time that they spent gazing at their owner. A blind coder who was unaware of the experiment’s hypotheses and goals coded the behaviors in order to find unbiased results. The results were that 72.9% of the testing time the dogs stayed within close proximity of their owners. In the staying still condition, the dogs spent more time staying still than in the walking and fast walking conditions. The dogs spent the most time walking in the walking condition than the staying still and fast walking conditions. And the dogs spent the most time trotting and cantering in the fast walking condition than in the fast walking condition than in the staying still and walking conditions. The dogs spent the most time gazing at their owners in the fast walking condition than the others, with the normal walking condition coming in second and the staying still condition coming last.

The results had a very strong correlation with the hypothesis. In all conditions the dogs tried to stay close to their owner. The dogs were observed matching their owners pace and location which effectively confirmed the experimenter’s hypothesis that dogs would sync their behavior to their owners in an open outdoor area. The results of this experiment give us insight on our relationships with our dear pet dogs. We know that in situations in which they are uncertain or insecure they will look to us for direction and guidance, demonstrated through when they gaze at us. No matter what they are doing, they want to be close to us as demonstrated by their close proximity in all conditions. And above all, they have established strong enough affiliative bonds in order to want to do everything that we do by syncing their behaviors to ours as our loyal and trusting pets.

References:

Duranton, C., Bedossa, T., & Gaunet, F. (2018). Pet dogs synchronize their walking pace with that of their owners in open outdoor areas. Animal Cognition, 21(2), 219–226. Retrieved from http://0-search.ebscohost.com.sophia.agnesscott.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eoah&AN=44699209&site=pfi-live