How it wags its tail to show happiness, how it lowers its ears or raises its hackles to signal moods and feelings, how it watches us and expresses a whole world of affection through its gaze. All of us who live with a dog are familiar with these behaviours, but science is now also studying their forms and expressions, explaining their bases and functions. Let us begin by trying to discover what binds dogs and humans together.

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What unites human beings and dogs from an emotional point of view

There is a scientific explanation for all of this: it appears that the feeling of affection linking the four-legged friend to its human companion resides in the gaze and in the eye contact that triggers a surge of the hormone known as oxytocin in both parties. This was highlighted by scientific research carried out by a group of Japanese scholars coordinated by biologist Miho Nagasawa of Azabu University. The study, which made the cover of the scientific journal Science, reveals that dogs became man's best friends by learning to look him in the eye and thus imitating an entirely human behaviour.

"The study also opens up new frontiers in the field of pet therapy and the use of dogs in social contexts: from the rehabilitation of those who have suffered post-traumatic stress, to childhood autism, in hospitals as well as in schools," explains Bruno Ferrari, a dog trainer at the Il mio cane school in Rho, Milan.

When dogs get bored

Boredom, in our four-legged friends, can be harmful and give rise to a host of negative behaviours that can affect the proper relationship between humans and dogs. Here too, a recently published scientific study in the journal Animal Behaviour by its author Charlotte Burn, a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College in London, provides authoritative insight. The researcher asked herself whether and how animals can fall victim to boredom and succeeded in discovering that dogs can experience sensations similar to those of their two-legged friends. Burn also identified a series of specific parameters to measure it quantitatively. The further development of this research could lead to considerable advances not only in the study of negative dog behaviours (such as separation anxiety, for example) but also, by extension, in humans.

Calming signals in dogs and their effects

Another important step in the field of observing dog behaviour was the scientific formalisation of calming signals. The so-called calming signals correspond to a series of behaviours that dogs use to identify and neutralise aggressive conduct. The first person to establish their precise functions and characteristics was, in the late 1980s, Norwegian dog trainer Turid Rugaas, who described them as specific behaviours of domestic dogs based on observations she carried out in the field.

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"Turid Rugaas has been fundamental for those of us who work with dogs. Thanks to her, it has been possible to better understand a series of small signals known as calming signals, or segnali di calma in dogs, which our animal friends emit in order to communicate with their fellow dogs and with us," explains Eleonora Mentaschi, behaviourist and director of the Il mio cane dog training school in Milan.

Now, ethological behavioural science has identified them precisely through an experimental study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior. The protagonists of the research are a group of researchers from the Department of Veterinary Sciences at the University of Pisa, comprising Chiara Mariti, Caterina Falaschi, Marcella Zilocchi, Claudio Sighieri, Asahi Ogi and Angelo Gazzano, in a study that is the first to examine these behaviours using a scientific-experimental methodology in order to assess their communicative and calming function.

The experiment involved 24 dogs, 12 females and 12 males, whose behaviours were analysed during interactions with other individuals — both familiar and unfamiliar dogs of both sexes. In total, the researchers observed 2,130 calming signals, the majority of which were emitted during encounters between unfamiliar dogs. Turning the head, licking the nose, freezing and moving away proved to be the most frequent behaviours when the dogs did not know each other, while licking the other dog's mouth occurred mainly with familiar dogs. This too is a finding that supports the visual observation of the behaviour of our four-legged friends. It is indeed common practice to observe signals of this kind in "dog areas" or, more generally, wherever a number of dogs gather to play or become acquainted. A practical observation that now also has a scientific and ethological justification.