A study shows that shelter dogs who give their potential adopters a puppy-like gaze are more likely to be taken home.
A study shows that shelter dogs who give their potential adopters a puppy-like gaze are more likely to be taken home.
The key, it seems, is in the eyes and specifically in making them look bigger, so they more closely resemble those of a baby.
In discovering this, researchers from the University of Portsmouth in the UK watched 27 shelter dogs react to people checking them out, and vice versa.
Of course, they’re scientists so assessing the canine’s facial expressions was far from casual.
Each dog was recorded and the muscle movements were later carefully analyzed.
The dogs that responded to the human gaze by widening their eyes and raising their inner brows were the same ones that got claimed more quickly than the others.
Researchers believe their discovery clarifies a lot about how it was dogs became domesticated from wolves in the first place.
They posit that in part unconscious people preferences like baby faces may have been instrumental in which wolves were chosen way back when.
Further, said one author, ''The results suggest dogs have evolved childlike facial features which make them more attractive to humans.”
