Kiley Benson
A new study offers scientific
backing to a long-reported anecdotal phenomenon. But canine envy is a little
different from the human kind.
This article originally
appeared on RealSimple.com.
We’ve long treated our dogs
like humans, dressing them in sweaters, letting them sleep in our beds—even
painting their nails. So it makes sense that we’re eager to attribute their
canine behavior to human emotions, crediting a wagging tail to joy or lowered
eyes to shame. Yet while research has shown dogs feel love and affection, more
complicated emotions like embarrassment and guiltdon’t seem to be in their
repertoire.
• But here’s one that might be: Scientists at UC San Diego
have found evidence suggesting that dogs could actually be capable of jealousy.
• Although Charles Darwin wrote about dogs’ jealousy in 1871
and dog owners have been quick to offer anecdotal evidence ever since, there’s
never been scientific proof of the phenomenon.
• This experiment involved 36 dogs and their owners. The
owners petted an animated toy dog while their real dog was in the room. They
also petted and played with a jack-o-lantern, and sat reading a noise-making
children’s book. Observers wrote down and cataloged the dogs’ reactions to each
of these three situations, which ranged from biting, barking, and pushing at
either the toy or the owner.
• The dogs were more likely to show signs of aggression,
attention-seeking behavior, and a heightened interest in their owners when the
fake dog was the object of affection. Most of the dogs clearly thought the
stuffed dog was real: 86 percent inspected and sniffed its butt at some point
during the experiment.
• “We can’t really speak to the dogs’ subjective
experiences, of course,” study author and psychology professor Christine Harris
said in a release. “But it looks as though they were motivated to protect an
important social relationship.”
• So is this behavior really the green-eyed monster as we
know it? Not quite. Researchers called the envious emotion that dogs experience
a “primordial” type of jealousy rather than the complicated thoughts that
torment adult humans.
• Infants show this instinctive kind of jealousy, too, when
their mothers shower affection on another baby. The scientists behind the study
say this could be evidence that jealousy is an innate emotion, like fear or
anger, that humans share in common with other social creatures.
• So if it seems like Fido is giving you the cold paw after
you’ve shown some love to another dog, it might not be your imagination.
