What do dogs see when they look at our faces? Science has the answer

Dogs can be very good at making eye contact, and even at reading emotions – but what happens when a dog looks at your face?

It’s very different from what happens when a human looks at you, researchers have discovered, after scanning dog and human brains.

Dogs don’t focus on faces, like people do – instead, they rely on other bodily signals to communicate, researchers suggest

Lead researcher Attila Andics, who led the study at Eotvos Lorand university in Budapest, told AFP: “The brain imaging findings in the study suggest that faces may be of crucial importance to humans and probably other primates, but not to all mammals, for example not for dogs.

“The two species differ in their visual communication and this is reflected in their brains.”

Humans possess a dedicated neural network for face processing, the researchers say.

But dogs are very different, seeming to show little preference for faces (although the researchers saw a preference for dogs over humans).

Researchers tested 20 dogs and 30 humans in the same functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment.

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