Essay On Pet Dogs

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Communication always has been a vital key to survival within all species. Although communication is generally associated with speech, it also involves gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions. We live in an environment in which we must interact with all species, including our pets. Pet dogs are an example of animals that humans encounter on a daily basis. These animals “show high levels of attentiveness towards human behavior, follow human gestures like no other animal, and show an increased readiness to look at the human face” (Barber). As a result, pets react to situations in the same way people react to situations, but it is unclear how these animals are able to process their emotions to correspond with ours. Up to now, little …show more content…

Over the course of two decades, numerous studies have been conducted to highlight a dogs’ ability to read communicative symbols (Racca). Those that live in households show high sensitivity to human signals such as eye contact, name calling, and vocal tones, and show an attentiveness to read a human face (Barber). Dogs also can read some visual, human, communicative signals such as a point or a nod in a certain direction (Racca). This trait shows that dogs are intelligent; however, it does not support if they are able to fully understand all that humans say and do. These creatures are perfect for the experiment of human emotional recognition due to their close connection with their owners and due to their ability to differentiate between communicative …show more content…

According to the text, “visual processing of emotions is known to be subject to brain lateralization in both human and non-human animals” (Racca). Therefore, dogs process many different ideas the way that humans process many different ideas. Dogs, such as lab dogs, that have no experience with human interaction would recoil from humans and react poorly to stimuluses. This is due to the distance relationship created between these animals and humans. In contrast, domestic dogs that create happier and more heartfelt connections with humans will recognize more distinctively the differences between each emotion. This is due to the close relationship created between these animals and human (Muller). Interaction between these species is important to the cognitive recognition of emotions within humans, and the less interaction that is shared between species, the less that dogs will be able to identify certain

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