Several studies have also shown that domesticated rats emit a high-pitched sound when tickled that bears close resemblance to human laughter. There is still plenty more to study in this area and there may be other findings that change how we perceive whether dogs can laugh.
Social media is full of pictures of dogs appearing to grin, but it seems that, much like with laughing, dogs can’t smile in the same way as humans. However, dogs can make their faces appear to smile.
They make brilliant companions, but do dogs really feel empathy for humans - and what is going through their minds when they play, panic or attack? Read more: the inner lives of cats: what our feline friends really think It is humanity’s great frustration, to gaze into the eyes of a dog, feel so very close to the creature, and yet have no clue what it’s thinking. It’s like the first question you ask of a recently born baby, with all that aching, loving urgency: is that a first smile? Or yet more wind? Except that it’s like that for ever. I can never know what my staffie is thinking. Does Romeo realise that what he just did was funny, and did he do it on purpose? Is he laughing on the inside? Can he smile? Can he feel anxious about the future? Can he remember life as a puppy? Does he still get the horn, even though I had his knackers off some years ago? And, greater than all these things: does he love me? I mean, really love me, the way I love him? To get some answers, I enlisted a group of experts, ranging from a zoologist to an evolutionary anthropologist, and channelled the spirit of Jaak Panksepp, who is commonly acknowledged as the grandfather of dog neuroscience. He died in 2017, leaving behind a body of experimental research and insight, including the theory that all mammal brains share seven primary emotional systems: fear, rage, lust, “seeking”, panic/grief, care and play. Most of my questions fall into these categories, apart from the age-old conundrum: why does my dog get so aroused by hi-vis lanyards? To which the answer is: it could be any reason at all. Do dogs understand human laughter? Do they make you laugh on purpose? “Dogs have learned to like us laughing,” says Rob Alleyne, a behaviourist who appeared in the TV series Dog Borstal. “They’ll do something, then look at you to see if you’re amused, then repeat that.” I once asked the comedian Rob Beckett how he could remember his routine – he keeps almost no notes – and he said: “If 500 people laugh at something you said, you’re not going to forget that.” The same circuit of approbation, creating feelings of gratification, laying down a memory of how to elicit that response in the future, is occurring in a dog. It’s just not going to be wordplay – it’ll be something more slapstick. Whaddya mean, can a dog smile? Photograph: Catherine Ledner/Getty ImagesCan dogs laugh – and do they make each other laugh? Can a dog smile? Does my dog love me? If it’s not love, why does it feel so good? What on earth is a dog doing in my oxytocin loop? Can my dog empathise? One simple measure of empathy is yawning. “Contagious yawning is related to empathy scores in adults,” Hare explains. “And in one study, over 70% of dogs yawned when they saw someone yawning.” Why do dogs get separation anxiety? How do they know how long you’ve been gone? Do dogs have a sense of time? But a dog that can be left for 40 minutes, yet freak out after 45 – what’s that about? The current best theory is that your scent in the air recedes minutely over time. Whenever you’re trying to understand a smell-related behaviour, remember that humans can smell a spoon of sugar in a cup of tea, while a dog can smell a spoon of sugar in a swimming pool. What’s the difference between distress and anxiety? Can a dog remember negative events? Can it get PTSD? Does a neutered dog still crave sex? Does humping always mean sexual arousal? What’s the root cause of aggression? Attacks are rooted in fear, and “one of the reasons people are often bitten”, Alleyne says, is that they misinterpret signs of fear. “A dog that’s panting may just be hot or he may be stressed. A dog with ‘whale eye’ [where the whites are clearly showing] might be stressed or he might be looking at something in his periphery. You’ve got to be able to look at the overall picture. If he’s got whale eye, and he’s panting, and his tail is down, and his ears are back, then he goes from panting to lip-licking, you have to be able to put all those things together.” And keep your distance. Why do some dogs attack others for no apparent reason? Alleyne’s explanation is more controversial: “Aggression is by a mile the most common problem I see, which it wasn’t 20 years ago. We’ve been bullied and badgered into socialising our dogs. They’ve become aggressive towards each other when we’ve never tried harder to socialise them. We haven’t thought about what socialising is: what we’re really doing is allowing them to be beaten up by other dogs when they’re too small to protect themselves. We call it one-trial learning: it only takes a single incident for a puppy to learn that other dogs are a threat.” What are dogs after? Photograph: Brighton Dog Photography/Getty ImagesWhy do they quest? What are they looking for? I’m not trying to shame cockapoo owners, by the way: I’ve always had staffies, and I’m constantly astonished and appalled to find that a dog bred to bring down a bull will, in the absence of one, make do with a labrador. We have taught them, over generations, these unshiftable urges. Now they’re here to teach us cause and effect, if only we would listen. 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