Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Study confirms Dogs More Loving than Cats and ...Humans

Another "D'OH" moment for dog lovers as we're astonished to find good money being invested in studies for which every dog owner already knew the answer. 

Check out those adorable eyes!

A new study done by researchers for a BBC documentary, "Cats vs. Dogs," have concluded there's five times more love generated in a dog when it sees its owner than a cat.

Our love is chemical, say scientists, so that's how they measured it. As we learned last year, when dogs see their owners, they feel oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates pleasure in our brain and helps us bond with our offspring.

This time, researchers tested pets for the "love hormone" before and after they saw their owners. Ten cats and 10 dogs were swabbed for saliva, then played with their owners for 10 minutes. After, the saliva was tested again. While the oxytocin levels were elevated in both animals, dogs showed an increase of 57.2 percent of the hormone compared to 12 percent in the cats. (One dog's hormone actually went up 500 percent!)

This isn't the first study on this subject. Last April, Science magazine revealed staring into a dog's eyes released oxytocin in people, too. Humans "use eye gaze for affiliative communications and [are] very much sensitive to eye contact," says Takefumi Kikusui, from Azabu University in Japan, told TODAY.com in an email. "Gaze, in particular, (over touch, for example) led to the release of oxytocin."
Love is in those droopy eyes
"I was really surprised to discover that dogs produced such high levels of oxytocin," neuroscientist Dr. Paul Zak, who worked with the documentary's results, said. "It was also a nice surprise to discover that cats produce any at all. At least some of the time, cats seem to bond with their owners."
What might come as a surprise, however, is that dogs are also apparently more loving than humans. On average, Zak added, a person's oxytocin levels only rise between 40-60 percent after interacting with a spouse or child.

Maternal Maggie Breaks Out to Comfort Frightened Foster Pups

At a Canadian pet motel and foster care center, Maggie the kindly dog broke out of his kennel to comfort and cuddle with two new, frightened, foster puppies on their first night

Maggie, the maternal dog, actually had a litter of her own who were all adopted out of the humane society a little while before she found a loving home. "We think that's why she got so attached to the puppies," Alex Aldred, who works at Barker's Pet Motel and Grooming, in Alberta Canada where the heartwarming events unfolded, told ABC News.

"We've never really seen it before, where a dog sneaks out to some puppies and is so excited to see them."...

"We left work and then we were watching the surveillance cameras while we were out and we saw Maggie was sitting in front of the puppies' kennels," Aldred told ABC. Aldred said his mother, Sandy, went back to check on Maggie after seeing through the video that she had gotten out of her kennel.

"She kind of directed Sandy to the puppies' kennel so Sandy let her in and she was being really affectionate," Aldred explains, "Sandy stayed in their for about 15 minutes and then said, 'Well it looks like they need each other,' and then let Maggie stay the night in their kennel."

Maggie stayed beside the puppies the whole evening long, and Aldred added that it seemed that the mother dog needed the puppy love as much as the frightened puppies needed her.

"When we came back in the morning they were all still cuddled up together."

Deanna Thompson, who works at the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS), the organization that rescued the puppies, told ABC News, of the pets, "They're between nine and ten weeks old," and, "A little bit playful but shy."

Thompson said she was not surprised by this act of maternal love that took place. "It's innate in a lot of female dogs, especially if they've had a litter in the past. It's just in their nature. We've seen it in a lot of dogs even with male dogs, when they hear other puppies crying they want to console them and make sure they're feeling safe."

AARCS organizes over 2,000 adoptions per year, and Thompson added that the young pups have yet to find a loving home.

Source ABC News