A wagging tail, a loving gaze, a playful leap… From all of these, you can tell how happy your dog is to be with you. However, you may not know why your dog is crying or getting angry. Tears can help strengthen the bond between humans and dogs, one research team claims.
Crying out of joy or sadness was known as an exclusively human behavior. No creature other than man was known to shed emotional tears. A research team in Japan conducted an experiment on dogs, considered man’s best friend. Dogs may also be shedding emotional tears, the team claims.
Dogs can cry from happiness and excitement too.
Like humans, dogs have tear ducts filled with tears to keep their eyes clean and healthy. However, the tears of dogs do not flow from their eyes when they cry like humans do. A study published in the scientific journal Current Biology found that dogs shed tears when they are happy.
When dogs are reunited with their owners after a day-long absence, they do more than just joy. According to research, they also cry from excitement. The study, which examined the behavior of 18 dogs, compared the amount of tears before and after dogs were reunited with their owners or people they were familiar with.
A piece of paper was placed under the eyes of the dogs who were away from their owners for 5 to 7 hours. As a result of the research, it was determined that the amount of tears increased even more when the dogs came together with their owners.
Tears could be caused by a love hormone
In experiments with 22 dogs in the second study, the researchers put oxytocin, known as the “love hormone,” into the dogs’ eyes to see if their tears were emotion-related. It was observed that the tears levels of the dogs that saw their owner after a certain period of time increased even more.
While humans are the only creatures known to cry as an emotional reflex, other animals use their tears to clean the moisture from their eyes or their vision. Therefore, adding oxytocin to a dog’s eyes may have produced tears of irritation, not happiness, but simply irritation. But the team that conducted the initial research don’t think this is the reason, as the oxytocin they used in their experiments did not cause more tears in dogs.
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