Dogs are man’s best friend, and their behavior when getting reunited with their owners, has led people to ask, do dogs cry when reunited with their owners?
A new study has concluded that tear production in dogs is activated when being reunited with their owners, and can be stimulated by oxytocin, a hormone that is released when the dog is feeling happy
But just what does this study say, and are there more things to consider when looking at the question, do dogs cry when reunited with their owners? Continue reading this article to find the answers!
Do Dogs Cry When Reunited With Their Owners?
The study which concludes that dogs do indeed cry when reunited with their owners can be found in a press release by Cell Press.
To start the research, the scientists looked at the number of tears produced by dogs, when they are just walking about in their homes, in a regular everyday setting.
Then they compared that with the number of tears produced within the first 5 minutes of being reunited with an owner they hadn’t seen for at least 5 hours.
What the scientists noticed was that the dogs produced a lot more tears at the reuniting, than they normally did. At the same time, the scientists found that the dogs didn’t produce tears of joy for anybody else than their owners.
Do We Know That a Dog’s Tear Production Is an Expression of Feelings?
But how do we really know that this excessive amount of produced tears, is even a sign of feelings in your dog?
To further investigate any connection between tear production and real feelings, the researchers used eye drops containing oxytocin, the previously mentioned “love” hormone, on the dogs, and it showed that these eye drops did indeed stimulate tear production, which confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis.
But couldn’t that just be because the dogs’ eyes got irritated from the eye drops?
The researchers tested this by also giving the dogs different eye drops that didn’t contain oxytocin, and the results were that this didn’t lead to an increase in tear production.
Final Words
Even though the study shows that dogs are indeed emotionally affected when they are reunited with their owners after being away for a while, it’s still not entirely clear how this comes into effect when it’s two dogs being reunited.
“We do not yet know if dogs show an increase of tears during a dog-dog reunion. We also do not know how dogs use tears to communicate with each other”
– Takefumi Kikusui, co-author of the research at Azabu University
This new study has been published in the scientific journal Current Biology.
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If you’re looking for the most up-to-date recommendations, check out my recommended products section that I’ve created to help every dog owner!
