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New Information On Dogs And Play!!!YAY!!!

Lisa Vaught
Nov 6, 2015
2 min read

Hello!

THERE IS A SCIENCE BEHIND HOW DOGS PLAY...who knew?

The way dogs interact with one another and play shows that they have a moral code as well as language, they don't simply play to dominate one another. Play is a learning time for puppies.

At the University of Colorado, Boulder, professor emeritus Marc Beckoff has been studying canine relatives such as the wolf and coyotes and how they play to see how they relate to one another. it's a major expenditure of time and energy in the wild, so why do they do it?

What he and other researchers have found is that during play dogs communicate by slight eye movements, or tail movements, using a language all its own. Play has a set of rules, and if a puppy breaks them he is excluded from group play. That response indicated to Bekoff that there are moral consequences involved in canine play, since just now science is acknowledging that dogs are sentient and understand one another.

The behaviors mean:

PLAY BOW~ invitation to play, indicates that he isn't serious and won't hurt you in ply. 2.
ROLLING OVER~ once considered submissive, research now indicates it could mean something else entirely. After studying a groups of large and small dogs at play at the University of Lethbridge and University of South Africa, researchers came to the conclusion it has nothing to do with being submissive, rolling over facilitates play behavior.
LETTING FEMALES WIN~ researchers found that male pups would let female pups 'win' at games even when they were larger than them. They posit that perhaps its more important to the pups to play than to win. Handicapping themselves probably is due to help mating later in life.

So, much of what we learned about puppy play years ago seems to have been turned on its head by scientific research at this time...we shall need to wait and see how it all pans out and if more will be learned.

information courtesy MNN, Mother Nature Network.