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 Dogs are capable of feeling a basic form of jealousy, according to
a study published in the PLOS ONE scientific journal.
The research, said to be the first experiment on canine jealousy,
could redefine the view that the complex emotion of envy is a human
construct, said Christine Harris, University of California, San
Diego psychologist and an author of the study.
The owners of 36 small dogs were asked to do three things in the
test - shower affection on a plush animatronic dog, shower affection
on a plastic jack-o-lantern pail and read a children's book aloud -
while ignoring their pet.
Researchers then watched how the dogs reacted.
Roughly 80 percent of the dogs pushed or touched their owner when
they were coddling the toy, almost twice as often as when the owner
played with the pail and about four times as often as when the owner
was reading.
A quarter of the dogs even snapped at the toy, which barked, whined
and wagged its tail, while the owner was playing with it. Only one
dog snapped at the pail and the book.
"We can't really speak to the dog's subjective experiences, of
course, but it looks as though they were motivated to protect an
important social relationship," Harris said in a statement
accompanying the study.
The research, based on a similar study to gauge jealousy in infants,
suggests dogs and possibly other animals exhibit a primordial form
of the emotion, the study said.
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Researchers said jealousy may have evolved as a way for paired
animals to protect their sexual relationships or for baby animals to
compete for food and affection from their parents.
They said it also may have developed in dogs during their long
domestication by humans.
"Humans, after all, have been rich resource providers over our
coevolution," they wrote in the study.
Understanding jealousy is an important scientific task, they wrote,
noting that jealousy is often considered a cause of homicides across
cultures.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in New York; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst
and Sandra Maler)
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