[Matlab Project] Do Dogs Get Jealous? Understanding Canine Emotions and Behaviour
1 Abstract
It can be seen in daily life that similar to human beings, canines also have emotions, but it is not clear whether each of them shows their emotions differently and whether they are jealous or not. This paper explores how different dogs of different genders would behave when they are ignored by their owners based on the data taken from the studies of Prato-Previde et al. (2018). To answer this question, the average time dogs spent doing each behaviour were calculated and compared between males and females. The results revealed that female dogs paid more attention to owners, interacted more with owners, did more vocalisations, chewing and orientation to the door. In contrast, owners did not really attract male dogs. In fact, male dogs interacted more with strangers, spent more time to explore the room and look at testing objects. Therefore, it can be concluded that female dogs were more connected with their owners, while male dogs focused more on strangers and the environment.
2 Introduction
2.1 Background Information
In order to understand whether dogs have the feeling of jealousy or not, in the published article “Pet dogs’ behavior when the owner and an unfamiliar person attend to a faux rival”, Prato-Previde et al. (2018) tested jealousy in dogs via two studies. In each study, there were thirty-six adult dogs and three objects, including a puppet, a book, and a fake dog (furry dog in study 1 and plastic dog in study 2). The dogs selected had been living in the household for at least one year, were at least one-year-old and were familiar with human strangers.
2.2 Experimental Procedure
Initially, the dog had ten minutes to explore the testing room freely while their owner learned the testing procedure, which contained three episodes, and simplified with the following six phases:
• BOW: the book (B) is held by the owner (OW)
• BSTR: the book is held by the stranger (STR)
• POW: the puppet (P) is held by the owner
• PSTR: the puppet is held by the stranger
• FDOW: the fake dog (FD) is held by the owner
• FDSTR: the fake dog is held by the stranger.
Each phase began with ‘a one-minute familiarization phase’ (Prato-Previde et al., 2018) when the owner wandered around the room, looked at posters on the wall, then sat on a chair. The stranger then entered the room with one of the objects and sat on an opposite chair. The stranger and the owner handled the object alternately on their lap for one minute while ignoring the dog and talking to each other. At the end of each phase, the stranger left the room and took the item with her.
2.3 Research Purposes
The studies of Prato-Previde et al. (2018) aimed for two purposes:
1. To evaluate whether dogs consider objects as social rivals instead of toys,
2. To clarify whether the owners and other humans play important roles in jealousy behaviours.
Using the data from the studies, this report analyses jealousy in dogs one step further to answer the question whether there are any differences between female and male dogs’ behaviours when their owners talk to strangers and completely ignore them.
3 Analysis Methods
3.1 Data Source
Data used in this report is from the Mendeley database (Nicotra, 2018). They were two data sets from the two studies where the duration of dogs’ behaviours was recorded by an HD video camera on one of the four corners of the testing room.
3.2 Programme Code
Refer to Appendix 1 for the scripts.
3.3 Statistical Approach
To begin, the data was cleaned up from the data set and the two studies were combined into one CSV file ‘dog_jealousy.csv’ using Microsoft Excel for Office 365.
Then, the whole analysis process was performed by MATLAB scripts on MATLAB R 2019a, starting from the script ‘dog_jealousy.m’. The CSV file was analysed by the script ‘analyze_study.m’. Firstly, the data were extracted from the CSV file by the function ‘extract_data.m’. Secondly, in the script ‘analyze_behavior.m’, after being calculated for males and females separately, the averages of time dogs spent on each activity were displayed on a plot with their 95 % confidence intervals and were compared to find out which gender spent the most of time on the behaviour. Finally, the function ‘analyze_study.m’ displayed behaviours’ charts and built a table to represent the gender which spent more time on the behaviour in each phase and the mode of each behaviour to see which sex spent more time on the behaviour.
In this report, the behaviours were analysed and grouped into four groups, including stress and aggressive behaviours, object-oriented behaviours, person-oriented behaviours, and environment oriented behaviours.
3.4 Flow Chart
4 Results
4.1 Stress-related Behaviours
Overall, participating dogs only spent a few seconds showing the stress behaviours. They did not bite either the people or the objects. Although female dogs chewed the fake dogs and the puppets more than male dogs did, male dogs were more stressed than female dogs were. Especially when the fake dog was handled by the owner, they were stressful in around 2.59 ± 0.98 seconds on average.
4.2 Object-oriented Behaviours
In general, canines spent more time looking at the objects than to interact and to investigate them. It can be seen that dogs participating in the studies looked at the fake dog more than the puppet and the book. The book and the puppet held by the owner attracted females’ gaze more, while male dogs significantly spent more time on the fake dog. Similarly, female dogs interacted more with the book and the puppet, whereas their counterparts had interaction with the fake dog. The dogs only had a social investigation on the fake dog. Females investigated the fake dog more on their owner’s lap and males investigated it more when it was handled by the strangers. The means of time spent by the two genders were 8.27± 2.99 and 4.26 ± 2.15 seconds respectively.
4.3 Person-oriented Behaviours
The differences between the two genders can be seen clearly when it comes to the behaviours towards strangers and owners. Female dogs paid more attention to their owners, and male dogs paid more attention to strangers. Similarly, female dogs interacted more with their owners and male dogs interacted more with strangers. Furthermore, female dogs also tried to attract the owners’ attention using vocalisations, while vocalisations of male dogs only lasted less than four seconds.
4.4 Environment-oriented Behaviours
Compared to female dogs, male dogs tended to care about their surroundings more. They spent more time to explore the room in all circumstances, and they only looked at the door for a significantly longer time than female did when the object was the puppet. Other times, female dogs oriented to the door more.
5 Discussion
From the analysis above, it can be concluded that female dogs were more connected with their owners, while male dogs focused more on strangers and the environment. This is consistent with the study of Duranton et al. (2015) which revealed that it took more time for bitches to look at their owners than for male canines. The differences in genders’ behaviours towards strangers, owners and the surroundings could stem from the fact that male dogs are bolder than female dogs, which has been proven by many other researchers, such as Scandurra et al. (2018), Duranton et al. (2015) and Beerda et al. (1999).
6 Appendix
6.1 Appendix 1 — MATLAB Scripts
All of the scripts can be downloaded from GitHub.
7 References
Beerda, B., Schilder, M.B.H., Bernadina, W., Van Hoof, J.A.R.A.M., De Vries, H.W., Mol, J.A (1999). Chronic stress in dogs subjected to social and spatial restriction. II. Hormonal and immunological responses. Physiology and Behavior, 66(2), 243–254. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(98)00290-X.
Duranton, C., Rödel, H.G., Bedossa, T., Belkhir, S. (2015). Inverse sex effects on performance of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in a repeated problem-solving task. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 129 (1), 84–87. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037825.
Duranton, C., Bedossa, T., Gauneta, F. (2016). When facing an unfamiliar person, pet dogs present social referencing based on their owners’ direction of movement alone. Animal Behavior, 113, 147–156. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.01.004.
Nicotra, V. (2018), “dog Jealousy studies 1 and 2”. Mendeley Data, v1. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/g8k5t4f645.1.
Prato-Previde, E., Nicotra, V., Pelosi, A., Valsecchi, P. (2018). Pet dogs’ behavior when the owner and an unfamiliar person attend to a faux rival. Plos One, 13(4), e0194577. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0194577.
Scandurra, A., Alterisio, A., Cosmo, A. D., Aniello, B. D. (2018). Behavioural and perceptual differences between sexes in dogs: an overview. Animals, 8(9), 151. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3390/ani8090151.
