The odour of an unfamiliar stressed or relaxed person affects dogs' responses to a cognitive bias test.
Sci Rep
; 14(1): 15843, 2024 07 22.
Article
de En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39039125
ABSTRACT
Dogs can discriminate stressed from non-stressed human odour samples, but the effect on their cognition is unstudied. Using a cognitive bias task, we tested how human odours affect dogs' likelihood of approaching a food bowl placed at three ambiguous locations ("near-positive", "middle" and "near-negative") between trained "positive" (rewarded) and "negative" (unrewarded) locations. Using odour samples collected from three unfamiliar volunteers during stressful and relaxing activities, we tested eighteen dogs under three conditions no odour, stress odour and relaxed odour, with the order of test odours counterbalanced across dogs. When exposed to stress odour during session three, dogs were significantly less likely to approach a bowl placed at one of the three ambiguous locations (near-negative) compared to no odour, indicating possible risk-reduction behaviours in response to the smell of human stress. Dogs' learning of trained positive and negative locations improved with repeated testing and was significant between sessions two and three only when exposed to stress odour during session three, suggesting odour influenced learning. This is the first study to show that without visual or auditory cues, olfactory cues of human stress may affect dogs' cognition and learning, which, if true, could have important consequences for dog welfare and working performance.
Mots clés
Texte intégral:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Base de données:
MEDLINE
Sujet principal:
Stress psychologique
/
Comportement animal
/
Cognition
/
Odorisants
Limites:
Animals
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Langue:
En
Journal:
Sci Rep
/
Sci. rep. (Nat. Publ. Group)
/
Scientific reports (Nature Publishing Group)
Année:
2024
Type de document:
Article
Pays de publication:
Royaume-Uni