Dogs and humans have had a close relationship for 15,000 years, but a new research, published in the online journal PLOS ONE, shows that the bond between humans and their canine friends has remarkable similarities to that between parents and human offspring.
University of Veterinary Medicine scientists from Vienna found that human infants perceive their parents or primary caregivers as security for coping with their environment. This is known as a "secure base effect." These researchers then set out to determine if this same quality is present in dogs.
Twenty dogs in the experiment were tested under three conditions - when their owners were present and engaging with them, with the dog's caregiver nearby but not engaged in play and while the human companion was missing.
The dogs were provided ways to earn treats by interacting with toys. What the researchers found is that dogs were far less interested in interacting with the toy-filled treat when their owners were not present. As long as their human companion was present, however, the level of interaction the people had with their canine made little difference in how much time the dogs spent with the toys.
Later, the experiment matched the dogs up with human strangers under the same conditions. The level of interaction between the dogs and toys was only slightly increased by the presence of a human stranger, regardless of the level of activity by the person.
"One of the things that really surprised us is, that adult dogs behave towards their caregivers like human children do. It will be really interesting to try to find out how this behavior evolved in the dogs with direct comparisons," Lisa Horn of Vetmeduni's Messerli Research Institute, who headed the study, said.
This showed researchers that the need by dogs for their human companions is similar to that of human infants. The levels of activity and confidence in both children and dogs are similarly boosted when their primary caregivers are present. Such human-pet bonding can often replace the relationships that dogs would have with other canines.
Human babies spend more time working out puzzles in the presence of their parental figures than when alone or with strangers, but grow out of the need for a secure base over time. Dogs, on the other hand, exhibit this behavior even through adulthood.
