Families, those who like flat-faced puppies are in luck

Families, those who like flat-faced puppies are in luck

Few people know that face reading is actually an early psychological discipline called phrenology. Phrenology believes that the shape of a person's skull can be used to interpret various aspects of a person's personality, abilities and psychology.

In the 1870s, phrenology claimed that people with large foreheads were more intelligent. Although in modern times, psychology has abandoned phrenology. However, a team from the Department of Animal Behavior at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, recently published a small-scale study in the journal Scientific Reports, suggesting that the shape of a dog's head can also predict their intelligence and problem-solving ability.

Image source: unsplash

There are many breeds of dogs, ranging from body size to head shape. If we measure the widest point of a dog's skull, divide the result by the maximum length of the skull, and multiply the result by 100, we get a "head index". Then based on this "head index", we can simply divide the dog's head shape into:

1. Long head/long face

"Cranial index" less than 50, such as Afghan hound, greyhound

2. Brachycephalic/flat face

"Cranial index" greater than 60, such as pugs and French bulldogs

3. Medium head type

The "head index" is between 50 and 60, such as golden retrievers and beagles.

The team gave dogs with different head shapes a task to find food. The dogs had to open a box and find the food. The boxes were different in difficulty and were randomly assigned to the dogs with different head shapes. The experimenters first let the dogs see them put a piece of sausage into the box, and then gave them two minutes to open the box. During this time, the experimenters and the dog’s owner stood behind the dog and could not be directly seen by the dog.

The experiment showed that the short-headed English bulldog and French bulldog had a 93% lower success rate in opening the box than the long-headed Madi. The Madi that could open the box was faster than the bulldog. At the same time, compared with the Madi, the English bulldog and French bulldog looked back at their owners 4.16 times and 4.49 times more often.

Researchers said that short-headed dogs are more likely to look at humans more frequently than long-headed dogs, and their interactions with humans increase, but their task completion rate is lower , making these dogs more like "children" in the eyes of humans, showing similar "lovable" characteristics. This may explain to some extent why these dog breeds are very popular pet dogs.

Image source: unsplash

It’s worth noting that the study involved only two brachycephalic breeds (15 English bulldogs and 15 French bulldogs) and one mesocephalous breed (13 Hungarian Mudis). And the reason why the brachycephalic breeds scored lower is unclear, but it could be related to genetic and physiological differences that may have emerged during the genetic selection process for domesticated brachycephalic dogs.

Also, these differences in the tests shown by dogs with different head shapes may be more due to differences in personality rather than differences in intelligence. The researchers pointed out that the two brachycephalic dog breeds they tested spent more time looking at their owners than the medium-headed dog breeds. These dogs may be looking for help from their owners, or they may simply be seeking encouragement and care from their owners. But for whatever reason, when dogs are distracted by paying attention to nearby humans, they are not focusing their energy on the problem that needs to be solved at hand, which will slow down the problem-solving process and reduce efficiency, making the dogs appear less smart in this test.

References

[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/canine-corner/202303/does-a-dogs-head-shape-predict-how-smart-it-is

Planning and production

This article is a work of Science Popularization China-Starry Sky Project

Produced by: Science Popularization Department of China Association for Science and Technology

Producer｜China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

Author: Zeng Xinyue, popular science creator

Reviewer: Huang Chengming, Researcher at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Editor: Zhong Yanping and Qi Yuan (Intern)

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