A Sentience Article from All-Creatures.org

Dogs do love us

From Nathan Winograd, Substack
August 2022

“But in typical — though scientifically understandable — fashion, researchers concluded that ‘ Through this process, their tears might play a role in eliciting protective behavior or nurturing behavior from their owners, resulting in the deepening of mutual relationships and further leading to interspecies bonding.’ Or, you know, they could just be happy to see us, because… love.” 

That twinkle in Oswald’s eye (my dog) is real. Those are tears of joy, according to a new study.

For years, scientists have cautioned against “anthropomorphizing” animals, saying we shouldn’t ascribe human experiences to them. Rather than answering the question, “do dogs love us?” with a resounding “yes!” they argued that we couldn’t say that dogs have emotions like love. At best, they had “emotion states” or “emotion-like states,” even when the behavior was indistinguishable from humans, except perhaps in the language ability used to express them.

They aren’t saying those things anymore.

Dogs are strikingly similar to humans in the caudate nucleus, the structure of the brain region associated with positive emotions, like love. As such, dogs experience love and attachment comparable to human children. Indeed, the capacity to “love may be natural selection’s most compelling force, driving us and our fellow animals to care beyond reason for our families, loved ones, and children.”

Dogs do love us. And in a recently published study, researchers prove we can see it in their eyes. Like people after a long absence, dogs shed tears of joy when reunited with family (and those tears are filled with oxytocin, the feel-good “love” hormone associated with bonding). They only shed those tears with their human family and not with others, even those who were familiar to them.

But in typical — though scientifically understandable — fashion, researchers concluded that “Through this process, their tears might play a role in eliciting protective behavior or nurturing behavior from their owners, resulting in the deepening of mutual relationships and further leading to interspecies bonding.”

Or, you know, they could just be happy to see us, because… love.

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