C.hi has a dog, after all, he already knew it: the furry ones know “on the skin” when the owner has some problems. Now science confirms this: dogs recognize the stress of people, and not just their owners, through sweat and breath. To find out, a new study by the researchers of the Queen’s University of Belfast, published on Plos One. The research results were published on Plos One. The study was led by Clara Wilson and Kerry Campbell at the School of Psychology.
They use their nose to “see” the world
The researchers observed four dogs of different breeds: Treo, Fingal, Soot and Winnie. In each test session, each dog was given “relaxed” and “stressed” samples of one person (among the 36 who took part in the study), samples taken just four minutes apart. And the dogs were able to identify each person’s stress sample with 93.8% accuracy.
“The results show that we, as human beings, we produce different smells through sweat and breath when we are stressed and dogs can tell them apart even if they don’t know us, ”explained Clara Wilson, a graduate student at Queen’s School of Psychology.
Therapy and companion dogs
Dogs therefore do not need visual or acoustic signals to perceive human stress: this has implications for therapy animals which are supported, for example, with people with post-traumatic stress disorder (Ptsd), who are currently trained to respond mainly to visual stimuli.
But, Wilson concludes, “the study also helps shed more light on the human-dog relationship in general. And it allows us to understand better the ability of these animals to use their noses to ‘see’ the world and to interpret and interact with human psychological states“.
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