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Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance

Dominance is well defined in ethology, debated in psychology, and is often unclear among the dog owning public and in the press. However, to date, no study has examined how owners perceive dominance in dogs, and what different behaviours and personality types are used to describe dominant and subord...

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Autores principales: Kubinyi, Enikő, Wallis, Lisa J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6511388/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31119074
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6838
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author Kubinyi, Enikő
Wallis, Lisa J.
author_facet Kubinyi, Enikő
Wallis, Lisa J.
author_sort Kubinyi, Enikő
collection PubMed
description Dominance is well defined in ethology, debated in psychology, and is often unclear among the dog owning public and in the press. However, to date, no study has examined how owners perceive dominance in dogs, and what different behaviours and personality types are used to describe dominant and subordinate individuals. A questionnaire study was launched to investigate the external validity of owner-derived estimates of dominance in dog dyads sharing the same household (N = 1,151). According to the owners, dogs rated as dominant (87%) have priority access to resources (resting place, food, and rewards), undertake certain tasks (defend and lead the group, bark more), display dominance (win fights, lick the other’s mouth less, and mark over the other’s urine), share certain personality traits (smarter, more aggressive and impulsive), and are older than their partner dog (all p < 0.0001). An age-related hypothesis has been suggested to explain dominance in dogs; but we found that dog age did not explain the occurrence of dominance related behaviours over the owners’ estimate of dominance status. Results suggest that owner-derived reports of dominance ranks of dogs living in multi-dog households correspond to ethologically valid behavioural markers of dominance. Size and physical condition were unrelated to the perceived dominance. Surprisingly, in mixed-sex dyads, females were more frequently rated as dominant than males, which might correspond to a higher proportion of neutered females in this subgroup. For future studies that wish to allocate dominance status using owner report, we offer a novel survey.
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spelling pubmed-65113882019-05-22 Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance Kubinyi, Enikő Wallis, Lisa J. PeerJ Animal Behavior Dominance is well defined in ethology, debated in psychology, and is often unclear among the dog owning public and in the press. However, to date, no study has examined how owners perceive dominance in dogs, and what different behaviours and personality types are used to describe dominant and subordinate individuals. A questionnaire study was launched to investigate the external validity of owner-derived estimates of dominance in dog dyads sharing the same household (N = 1,151). According to the owners, dogs rated as dominant (87%) have priority access to resources (resting place, food, and rewards), undertake certain tasks (defend and lead the group, bark more), display dominance (win fights, lick the other’s mouth less, and mark over the other’s urine), share certain personality traits (smarter, more aggressive and impulsive), and are older than their partner dog (all p < 0.0001). An age-related hypothesis has been suggested to explain dominance in dogs; but we found that dog age did not explain the occurrence of dominance related behaviours over the owners’ estimate of dominance status. Results suggest that owner-derived reports of dominance ranks of dogs living in multi-dog households correspond to ethologically valid behavioural markers of dominance. Size and physical condition were unrelated to the perceived dominance. Surprisingly, in mixed-sex dyads, females were more frequently rated as dominant than males, which might correspond to a higher proportion of neutered females in this subgroup. For future studies that wish to allocate dominance status using owner report, we offer a novel survey. PeerJ Inc. 2019-05-09 /pmc/articles/PMC6511388/ /pubmed/31119074 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6838 Text en ©2019 Kubinyi and Wallis http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Kubinyi, Enikő
Wallis, Lisa J.
Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title_full Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title_fullStr Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title_full_unstemmed Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title_short Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
title_sort dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6511388/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31119074
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6838
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