Dogs Children: Our Dogs See Us As If We Were Their Parents?

As social animals , dogs have an innate need to form strong bonds with others of the same species. However, when pets have also developed the need to form strong bonds with humans.

Scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna ( Vienna Vetmeduni ) studied the type of bond that dogs are to humans , based on attachment theory . Their results suggest that the links are dogs with their humans could be very similar in principle to the links that make young children with their parents.

Attachment theory suggests that the strong link of babies to their parents is an evolutionary adaptation that protects infants, and that attachment makes them often look to their parents or caregivers. Vienna Vetmeduni scientists suggest that dogs have developed a similar adaptation along its evolution , by which not only can stick to their conspecifics , but also to humans. This would have helped much , since most dogs live as pets or in some kind of dependency towards people .

During the research , scientists evaluated particularly what is known as a secure base effect , which is one component of attachment theory that says that the caregiver or parent provides a secure base for the child to explore the world with confidence. In the case of dogs, the base securely provide the owner or keeper of the dog.

Through several experiments, concluded that dogs are indeed dependent on the security provided by their owners or caretakers to confidently explore their environment. When caregivers or owners were not , dogs were more reluctant to explore and even to take food that was in the place. This even if there were other people in the place .

This research says a lot about the differences between dogs and wolves (which are only strong links between them) and the collaborative evolution of dog and man . Besides being a starting point for further studies on the evolution of dog behavior can result in applied studies about how to approach unfamiliar dogs making them feel safe (useful eg for trainers and veterinarians ) .

However, there are aspects to be assessed in the future. For example, if the link - man dog there are different types of addiction as found the child - parent relationship ( secure attachment , insecure attachment or avoidant and ambivalent attachment ).

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