Talk-to-Tilt: Head Tilting in Dogs

upstart writes:

Talk-to-tilt: head tilting in dogs:

Several animals, including humans, present an asymmetry in the way they move or perceive the environment through their senses. For instance, one can prefer an ear or an eye over the other, when processing a vocal signal or an image. In dogs, these asymmetries manifest in behaviours such as tail wagging, nostril use while sniffing, or even paw preference when trying to grasp something out of their reach. Lateralization is also present in brain functioning.

Tilting the head is yet another asymmetrical movement in dogs, but it had never been studied. We investigated the frequency and direction of this behaviour in response to a specific human verbal vocalization: when the owner asks the dog to bring a toy by saying its name. We did so after realizing that it often happened when the dogs were listening to their owners" explains Dr. Andrea Sommese, lead researcher for this study, from the Family Dog Project, at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest.

The researchers analysed the videos collected during a previous study which showed that not every dog could learn toy names after 3 months of intensive training. The test was fairly easy to execute: the toys were placed in one room and the owner in another, together with the experimenter. In each trial, the owner asked the dog to fetch a specific toy by saying its name.

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