Laughing Dogs

Posted on June 16, 2009 by: WayCoolDogs

Dogs have been around a long time, but only recently has it been found that laughing dogs are a normal situation found among dog packs, dog group settings, and dog/human connections as a form of social communication. Similar to a laughing human sound but with the vocal vowel removed, the sound from laughing dogs is a forced exhalation from its breathing mechanism. It is an exclusive sound heard from laughing dogs at play or during dog/human counters, said to be a dog vocalization to initiate the play act and to demonstrate good intentions. To imitate the sound, take the Hah Hah Hah sound that we make and remove the letter “a”. (heard at http://www.petalk.org/graphics/DogPant.jpg).

Patricia Simonet, animal behaviorist at the Sierra-Nevada College and at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS), headed the 2005 study which proved what dog owners have said for years…their dogs actually do laugh even at the windiest fish story we tell them…but now is supported by actual scientific evidence (not about the size of the fish!). This ground-breaking study on laughing dogs has paved the way for additional dog studies on their communication with dogs and humans.

The social cognitive capacities of a dog, which include their visual attention cues and communication skills, are now being investigated in numerous experimental studies. Some of these studies are at work to show the dog’s sensitivity to the visual attention of their partners when engaging in rough-and-tumble play. What has been found among dogs is a signal humans call “paying attention.” Dogs not only can laugh, but can show attention to and act specifically to manipulate…a behavior which requires the ability to respond. In other words, these dogs showed attention to and act to manipulate, a feature of the other dogs that mediates their ability to respond..a feature in human interaction which is called “attention”. So not only can a dog laugh or socially greet another dog or “human”, but they are fully capable of paying attention to a particular situation enough to act accordingly. These studies are showing that there is nothing “dumb” about dogs…only what we don’t know about them.