According to a recent study, dogs can catch people’s yawns too. It was previously thought that only humans and their close primitive relatives could find them contagious but apparently not.
The research team are based at Birkbeck College in London. They say that autistic people are less likely to copy other people’s yawns and it is believed that our natural reaction to copy someone’s yawn is from a natural inclination to wanting to empathise.
29 dogs were involved in the tests and each underwent two tests, each lasting 5 mins. In the first test, a person (a stranger) sat in front of the dog and called his name. When they made eye contact, the person yawned. In the second test, the person was asked to do the same but this time only open and close their mouth, not to actually yawn. This was to ensure the dog wasn’t simply responding to an open mouth.
21 of the 29 dogs yawned in response to the yawn but not one yawned in response to the open mouth test. This indicates that dogs can empathise with humans although the team couldn’t rule out stress-induced yawning, although they intend to continue testing in order to hopefully rule this out in future.
The research team also said that this capacity may have been increased during domestication as humans have selected dogs to be obedient and docile so through their breeding in domestication this sort of trait would be increased.
So next time you yawn, just watch and see what your dog does!
I never considered before how blind travellers get on when they want to go abroad by airplane, not until I read today about how the new EU legislation will mean that 11 more airports in the UK will have to handle guide dogs.
Apparently, guide dogs until this year, were only accepted at Heathrow, Glasgow, Doncaster Sheffield and Manchester airports.
The last few airports will hopefully be included from next year. The Guide Dogs for the Blind have welcomed the news.
After all, it’s only right that a blind or partially sighted person should have the same travel options as everybody else.
I’m obviously having a blonde day… I looked at this and thought it was really a dog toilet. For a second, I was picturing my dog sat on a little toilet in the garden.
Anyway, what it really is, is an environmentally, beneficial-to-the-garden way to dispose of doggie poop. You bury it in the garden so that only the lid shows and simply scoop the poop into it. The Dog Loo keeps dog mess away from kids and pets, and helps the environment - great! Take a look it’s only £19!
The RSPCA has said convictions for dog cruelty rose more than a third in 2007. They also gave examples such as an owner who cut the ears off their Staffordshire bull terrier just to make it look macho!
These higher levels of conviction don’t necessarily mean higher levels of cruelty.
An RSPCA spokesperson said:
“That’s what makes this year’s horrendous 34% increase even more shocking: it’s a massive increase on an already high figure.”
I think dog cruelty is something that needs to be focussed on. I wrote an article yesterday about a dog owner who was fined £1200 just for his dog being found roaming without a tag – even though it had a collar. This isn’t the sort of thing we should be wasting our time on when there are people out there cutting the ears off their dog!!
I’ve seen this dog video before but it still makes me laugh.
It’s not your typical video. We’ve all seen the ones, or experienced it with our own dog, where the dog runs into the patio doors or something daft because they cannot see the glass and try to run straight through it.
No, this dog video is a labrador whose owner opens the door and the dog STILL won’t go out because he seems to think there’s glass in it. Labradors are a pretty intelligent dog breed, and I guess it is quite intelligent to anticipate glass being in the door - either that, or he’s been thick enough to walk or run smack bang into glass so many times that he’s now scared of doors!
Anyway, without any more to-do, here’s the video, sit back and enjoy - it only takes 1 minute, so that’s probably just enough time for a biscuit but not enough for a cup of tea, sorry
