Dogs have lived with us for thousands of years, so we have learned to understand one another. Dogs have been shown to synchronize their behavior with humans. Behavioral synchronization is characterizes by doing the same thing at the same time and in the same place as someone else. This synchronization is often dependent on the relationship and the emotional state of the individuals. The main aim in this study was to develop a method to test behavioral synchronization and also to investigate how this, but also other behaviors, are effect by preceding human-dog interactions. Privately owned dogs (N=21) were tested with three different treatments (play, pet or ignore). The test procedure consisted of the owner walking or standing still in a predefined pattern, while their dog was freely roaming. This study showed that dogs adapted their movement pattern to their owners. This was similar to previous studies showing that the method developed can be used to test behavioral synchronization between owner and dog. Dogs explored the test arena less after play interaction and they also tended to seek more eye contact with their owners, but the interactions did not affect how much time spent in human proximity, how much they followed them or on dogs movement pattern.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-157382 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Heurlin, Jasmine |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Biologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0029 seconds