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Dogs sense our stress

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Dogs can sense stress from humans, shows a study published in September 2022 in the scientific journal PLOS One.

Clara Wilson of Queen’s University Belfast and her colleagues conducted this study with four dogs and 36 people.

They took sweat and breath samples from participants before and after they solved a difficult math problem and indicated their level of stress before and after the task. The researchers only used the samples where the person’s blood pressure and heart rate had increased.

The dogs learned to look for a particular scent and signal the researchers to the correct sample. The stress and relaxation samples were then introduced, but at this stage the researchers were unsure if there was a difference in smell that the dogs could detect.

During each testing session, each dog received a person’s stress and relaxation samples, taken just four minutes apart. All of the dogs were able to correctly alert the researchers to each person’s stress sample.

The results show that we as humans produce different smells through our sweat and breath when we’re stressed, and that dogs can tell them apart from our smell when we’re relaxed – even though it’s from someone they don’t knowconcludes the researcher. “They show that dogs do not need visual or auditory cues to detect human stress.»

The study sheds more light on the human-dog relationship and adds to our understanding of how dogs can interpret and interact with human psychological states.»

For more information on dog psychology, see the links below.

Psychomedia with sources: Queen’s University Belfast, PLOS One.
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