It is a well-known cliché that dogs are man’s best friend. Throughout history, humans have domesticated dogs for hunting, herding, protection, and, most of all, companionship. Domesticated dogs are affectionate creatures that live to serve others and spread love to those around them. We treat our dogs like members of the family, but we rarely take the time to understand our dogs’ emotions. Our relationship with dogs is very much a one-way street in that sense because they can read our emotions through our body language and we fail to comprehend theirs.
Most people believe that dogs experience feelings the same way humans do, but scientists are now suggesting that dogs have a different range of emotions than the average adult human. According to Psychology Today’s article, “Which Emotions do Dogs Actually Experience” by Stanley Coren, author of many books concerning the understanding and analysis of the canine behavior, such as How to Speak Dog, dogs undergo the same hormonal and chemical changes during emotional states and have the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans.
So, how are a dog’s emotions different than a human’s emotions? Researchers have concluded that a dog’s brain is emotionally equivalent to that of a 2½-year-old human child. Like young children, dogs are easily excitable and have a limited range of emotions. This explains why they whine when you leave and jump on you when you come back.
As explained by Coren, dogs develop emotions in the same sequence as human infants up until the age of 2½, but dogs go through developmental stages much quicker, as they acquire the full range of emotions 4 to 6 months after birth, whereas humans develop a full range of emotions between 4 and 5 years after birth. This means that our furry friends don’t develop as many emotions as we do.
Within the first few weeks of human life, infants go through an excitement phase, where they are able to sense and express contentment and distress, and then in the next few months, they develop the ability to understand disgust, fear, and anger, followed by joy and shyness at the age of 6 months and affection at the age of 9 to 10 months. The more complex emotions, like shame, guilt, and pride take over 3 years to develop in a human, and because dogs have the mentality of a 2½ year old human, dogs cannot feel or comprehend shame, guilt, or pride. It makes sense considering their tendency to eat their own poop.
This is why dogs will get into trouble when their owners aren’t watching even though they know they will be scolded. They don’t feel bad about their actions; they just know that their owners don’t approve. Your pooch may hang his or her head in what seems like an expression of guilt to us humans, but it is actually a message that they are afraid of being punished. On the plus side, they will never be upset with you when you put them in goofy outfits and post dog-shaming photos on the internet because they have no shame and no reputation to uphold.
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