Scientists have found that dogs can listen to their owners even in their sleep.
Miscellaneous / / September 12, 2023
The dog is sleeping, but his ears are working.
Even in sleep, dogs are able to perceive a person’s voice and analyze it. This is evidenced by the results of a small pilot research, which was carried out by Hungarian scientists.
The authors connected 13 volunteer dogs to a device that measured their brain's potential responses to what was happening around them. They were then played recordings of people's voices and dogs barking while they were awake, sleepy, or asleep.
Each sound lasting 1 second was played at the same volume. The range of sounds included squeals, whines, growls, coughs, laughter, sighs and yawns. No negative sounds were used to avoid scaring the dogs.
It turned out that even in the slow-wave sleep phase, dogs could determine whether a sound came from a person or another dog. They could also recognize the emotional connotation of the sound - positive or neutral.
Researchers have previously documented a similar ability in primates, including humans, as well as mice and some other animals. Given that mammals spend a significant portion of their lives sleeping, the ability to process social cues even in this state has likely played a vital role in our survival.
How much we understand during sleep depends both on the stage of sleep we are in and on the type of noise we hear. For example, even in a dream, the response to the sound of your own name will be different from other sounds.
It is believed that dogs' sleep changed after domestication and became more similar to the sleep of humans than other laboratory species. Older dogs are also often troubled by shallow and interrupted sleep, just like some older people.
The authors note that while further research will be needed to verify these findings, they add to a growing list of similarities between dog and human sleep behavior. This could potentially mean that dogs could be used in comparative neuroscience studies. They emphasize that although such research is quite labor-intensive, it does not require prior training of the animals and does not harm them in any way.
More about tailed animals🐕
- Scientists have developed an accurate formula for converting the age of dogs to human years
- Not all bones are created equal: 8 myths about dog care that can harm your pet
- Scientists: dogs can cry for joy at the sight of their owner