Which way does your dog's tail wag? The tail starts at a neutral point -- the midpoint of the dog's body -- but what influences which way it goes from there?
That is what an Italian neuroscientist and two Italian vets wanted to find out. They reported their results in the March 20 issue of Current Biology, which The New York Times detailed in a story this week.
The bottom line: They found that dogs wag their tails with a bias to the right side of their bodies when they see their owners, an unfamiliar human (non-threatening) or when they look at a cat. The speed and the forcefulness of the wag increases from the cat, to the unfamiliar human to the owner, but it always has a bias to the right.
Change the picture to an aggressive, unfamiliar dog. In the study, it was a large Belgian shepherd Malinois. The dogs wagged their tails with a bias to the right side of their bodies.
Try it out on your dog. Let me know if you find the same thing.
That is what an Italian neuroscientist and two Italian vets wanted to find out. They reported their results in the March 20 issue of Current Biology, which The New York Times detailed in a story this week.
The bottom line: They found that dogs wag their tails with a bias to the right side of their bodies when they see their owners, an unfamiliar human (non-threatening) or when they look at a cat. The speed and the forcefulness of the wag increases from the cat, to the unfamiliar human to the owner, but it always has a bias to the right.
Change the picture to an aggressive, unfamiliar dog. In the study, it was a large Belgian shepherd Malinois. The dogs wagged their tails with a bias to the right side of their bodies.
Try it out on your dog. Let me know if you find the same thing.
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