Angry yelling can throw a dog off balance
Whether it’s the sound of food being poured into a bowl or the front door opening, a dog’s ears are on alert. Noises picked up by their highly acute senses can also affect their balance. A small study in Austria found that balance is stabilized and destabilized when dogs hear happy or angry human voices. But it was the angry voices that were the most destabilizing. The results are detailed in a study published today in the journal PLOS One.
A stable posture helps dogs (and humans) stay still, walk and run without falling. To maintain stability, muscles rely on visual cues and the body’s perception of its own position. For humans, external sounds can also influence the stability of our body, with high frequencies linked to destabilization and white noise linked to stabilization. However, few studies have examined the impact of sounds on animal posture and stability.
In the new study, a team from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, measured balance changes in 23 pet dogs after hearing happy and angry human voices. To do this, they placed the dogs on a pressure-sensing platform that picked up the dogs’ small movements.
When the team counted the individual changes of the 23 dogs, the responses varied. Happy voices were linked to destabilization for 57 percent of the dogs. Surprisingly, happy voices were also linked to destabilization for 43 percent of the dogs tested. Angry human voices were associated with the most severe destabilization in 30 percent of the dogs, while 70 percent showed no change in their balance.
According to the team, these results suggest that happy and angry human voices can trigger an emotional response that affects a dog’s balance. However, the sample size is small, so further research on larger numbers of dogs is needed to draw major conclusions. Future studies could determine whether an animal’s previous experience affects its reactions and whether freezing in response to happy voices is linked to waiting for its human to approach.
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