Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Why are dogs friendly?




If you're a dog person, you'll understand. Dogs get excited the second you walk through the door from being away for a minimum of a half hour or when you meet your friend's dog for the first time. They welcome you with the cutest tail wag and most adorable puppy-dog eyes that is so irresistible and leaves you saying "Awww" aloud. Whether you're coming home to your dog, adopting a new dog, or meeting a dog for the first time, the experience is all the same every time; you're greeted with love and affection. In this article, "What makes dogs so friendly? Study finds genetic link to super-outgoing people," researchers have proven that dogs are hypersocial compared to wolves, but also further researched what makes them that way. Is it genetics? Seemed like a long shot, but it was worth a try. Researchers have compared domesticated dogs and humans with Williams-Beuren syndrome, which is a developmental disorder that affects different parts of the body by the deletion of part of chromosome 7 and one of the many characteristics of this disorder is that it makes a person very trusting and overly friendly. In this article, they made this connection to dogs because this DNA was found in dog chromosome 6 and could be the responsible for dogs' friendliness. As the study continued, between wolves and dogs, the results showed that hypersocial dogs had more DNA disruptions than the wolves. The article stated, "disruption on a gene for a protein called GTF21, which regulates the activity of other genes, was associated with the most social dogs." If the gene lacked changes, it would lead to "aloof, wooflike bahavior." Other experts found this study very fascinating and believe that further research is needed.
I found this article very interesting to read, not only because I'm a huge dog person, but because I never knew that dogs and humans shared the same genes for social behaviors. Now that I have read this article, I look at my 4 dogs and I'm grateful that they are so friendly and happy to see me come home. I'm glad that they made this connection because it gives a person, who might be afraid of dogs, a little more security that dogs are friendly and that they aren't so different from humans after all. This study brings us to a closer relationship with our pets. I've come to realize that dogs aren't so different from humans. I believe that this study takes a step forward for researchers to understand more about the genes of social behaviors between humans and domesticated pets.


http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/what-makes-dogs-so-friendly-study-finds-genetic-link-super-outgoing-people
https://williams-syndrome.org/what-is-williams-syndrome

5 comments:

  1. I find this very interesting as I am also a dog person. The fact that they can pinpoint where their socialness and friendliness to disruptions in DNA is amazing as genetics really can be used for everything. It also explains why some dogs are nicer than others and this should help people understand their pets more.

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  2. This article is very interesting because it talks about the connection between humans and pets (like dogs). I am also a dog person; however, I do not have a dog because my family is scared of dogs. Genetics can really be used for anything, especially the fact that pets can isolate where their warmth and sociability to disrupt in DNA is something unique to know. I really hope my parent’s allow me to keep a pet (small puppy atleast).

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  3. This post was very interesting to read for me because I am a huge dog person. I actually work at a doggy daycare and see about 200 dogs a day, and they all exhibit this excited behavior every time you walk into the room. It is really cool to learn that dogs and humans share the same genes for social behaviors, and that dogs are more like humans than we previously had realized.

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  4. I too am a dog person! I wanted to read this article because my dog is actually not too friendly! I usually don't let people pet him just because I get scared he will bite. I guess just like they can share good traits for behavior they can also share bad traits!

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  5. This paired with the recent research that proves that dogs change their facial expressions when humans are around show how much we have influenced Dog genetics over the millennia. The fact that we influence their social behaviors is absolutely astounding, it makes you wonder what dogs would have been like if we never domesticated them .

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