The study, made by scientists at many Japanese universities and released in the Journal Science, including two main parts. In the first part, the scientists saw thirty dog parents’ social interaction with their pups for 3o minutes and then tested both human and dog levels of oxytocin.
(Oxytocin, often pointed at as the “love hormone” or the “bonding hormone,” is basic to human physical interaction; it comes out while having sex and interaction between couples. Also, it plays a role in mother-child bonding.)
The scientists found that the owners whose dogs stared at them the longest had the highest oxytocin levels. Also, the oxytocin levels of people and their dogs were remedial: If the owner had higher levels after they reacted, the dog likely did as well.
As a control group, the researchers repeated the same process with wolves who were raised by humans, paired with someone who raised them. There was no evidence of any effect on oxytocin levels.
The second part of the research attempted to figure out if the oxytocin gave reason to the long stare. Therefore, the scientists’ managed oxytocin to a new dog and watched them connect with their human partners. Oddly, oxytocin managed on female pups drove to higher levels in both the pups and their owners. However, that impact didn’t exist in males, and scientists weren’t certain.
Generally, the results propose that as pups turned into domesticated, they may have made a commonly useful capacity to bond with people the exact way that we are friends with each other. In a research on the study from Science, Evan MacLean and Brian Hare, both cognitive scientists at Duke, write, “dogs have taken advantage of our parental sensitivities—using behaviors such as staring into our eyes—to generate feelings of social reward and caretaking behavior.” So, dogs knew to trigger the same love that parents feel for their kids.
