Why do dogs tilt their heads to the side?
Anyone who owns a cat knows that when you call its name, the cat will usually turn its head or turn its ears as a response to you, but cats basically do not tilt their heads. Dogs are different. They often tilt their heads to one side as if they are thinking carefully about what you are saying. This is also different from the way parrots and chickens turn their heads and listen to sounds with one ear. Of course, it's not just dogs who can do this kind of "tilt their head to kill", almost all canine animals can do it. Many people have given different views on this.
When you ask your dog if he wants to go for a walk in the park, you may see him tilt his head curiously in response. This adorable canine behavior is familiar to dog owners, but no one really knows why man's best friend does it.
Research on why dogs tilt their heads is very limited, and scientists have published only one study on possible causes of this phenomenon. This research shows[1] that dogs may tilt their heads when processing familiar words.
Andrea Sommese, an animal cognition researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, said: “For humans, when you recall a story or something, You tilt your head to one side and you have a mental image of something in your mind. It's probably the same with dogs," he was the study's lead author.
Many animals tilt their heads as they perceive the sights, sounds, and smells of the world. Somerset says this mostly has to do with them having a preferred ear (or sometimes nostril).
In other cases, it's to localize the sound. "Humans do this; birds do this; dogs do this," said Julia Meyers-Manor, an animal cognition researcher at Ripon College who was not involved in the study. Many different species tilt their heads because it changes the angle your ear is at so that sound reaches the other ear before it does."
For example, the western barn owl (Barn owls) is the champion of head tilt, and it can rotate its neck 270 degrees. According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Anatomy, this adaptation helps them focus their gaze (their eyes are essentially stationary) on prey and also allows them to Point your sensitive ears in almost any direction.
However, in at least some cases of canine head tilt, the behavior appears to have more to do with information processing than just when the information is first gathered.
Somerset and his colleagues studied a group of "gifted" dogs [3] that could learn to understand the names of many toys, a nearly impossible feat for ordinary dogs. When comparing these high-achieving dogs with those who couldn't be trained to learn the names of toys, the researchers found that when the owners of these gifted dogs named one of the toys, their heads tilted by 43%. %. And only 2% for ordinary dogs.
The gifted dogs tilted their heads in the same direction regardless of where their owners were standing, suggesting that the behavior was not about accurately locating the sound but about processing the sound and matching it to a memory image in their mind, Thome said. Sai said.
"Perhaps the reason why ordinary dogs don't do this is because they don't associate the name with a specific toy, so they can't effectively establish the memory pathway," he said. But the average dog may respond to something associated with it, such as being promised a treat or going for a walk.
Somerset and his colleagues, who published their findings in 2021 in the journal Animal Cognition, have not yet been able to conduct follow-up studies of head tilt in canine cognition.
So why does head tilt seem to help dogs process familiar words?
This may be related to the lateralization of the brain, where certain stimulus processing areas are located on the left or right side. In humans, language processing is primarily concentrated on the left side of the brain [4]. According to a 2016 study published in Science[5], dogs process familiar human words on the right side of the brain, but the same concept may still hold.
Over time, this can also evolve into a social cue to show others that you're active and engaged in what's going on around you, Meyers-Manoir says. This social component may explain why humans interpret a dog's head tilt as attention and curiosity, and why we find it so cute.
When you ask your dog if he wants to go for a walk in the park, you may see him tilt his head curiously in response. This adorable canine behavior is familiar to dog owners, but no one really knows why man's best friend does it.
Research on why dogs tilt their heads is very limited, and scientists have published only one study on possible causes of this phenomenon. This research shows[1] that dogs may tilt their heads when processing familiar words.
Andrea Sommese, an animal cognition researcher at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, said: “For humans, when you recall a story or something, You tilt your head to one side and you have a mental image of something in your mind. It's probably the same with dogs," he was the study's lead author.
Many animals tilt their heads as they perceive the sights, sounds, and smells of the world. Somerset says this mostly has to do with them having a preferred ear (or sometimes nostril).
In other cases, it's to localize the sound. "Humans do this; birds do this; dogs do this," said Julia Meyers-Manor, an animal cognition researcher at Ripon College who was not involved in the study. Many different species tilt their heads because it changes the angle your ear is at so that sound reaches the other ear before it does."
For example, the western barn owl (Barn owls) is the champion of head tilt, and it can rotate its neck 270 degrees. According to a 2017 study in the Journal of Anatomy, this adaptation helps them focus their gaze (their eyes are essentially stationary) on prey and also allows them to Point your sensitive ears in almost any direction.
However, in at least some cases of canine head tilt, the behavior appears to have more to do with information processing than just when the information is first gathered.
Somerset and his colleagues studied a group of "gifted" dogs [3] that could learn to understand the names of many toys, a nearly impossible feat for ordinary dogs. When comparing these high-achieving dogs with those who couldn't be trained to learn the names of toys, the researchers found that when the owners of these gifted dogs named one of the toys, their heads tilted by 43%. %. And only 2% for ordinary dogs.
The gifted dogs tilted their heads in the same direction regardless of where their owners were standing, suggesting that the behavior was not about accurately locating the sound but about processing the sound and matching it to a memory image in their mind, Thome said. Sai said.
"Perhaps the reason why ordinary dogs don't do this is because they don't associate the name with a specific toy, so they can't effectively establish the memory pathway," he said. But the average dog may respond to something associated with it, such as being promised a treat or going for a walk.
Somerset and his colleagues, who published their findings in 2021 in the journal Animal Cognition, have not yet been able to conduct follow-up studies of head tilt in canine cognition.
So why does head tilt seem to help dogs process familiar words?
This may be related to the lateralization of the brain, where certain stimulus processing areas are located on the left or right side. In humans, language processing is primarily concentrated on the left side of the brain [4]. According to a 2016 study published in Science[5], dogs process familiar human words on the right side of the brain, but the same concept may still hold.
Over time, this can also evolve into a social cue to show others that you're active and engaged in what's going on around you, Meyers-Manoir says. This social component may explain why humans interpret a dog's head tilt as attention and curiosity, and why we find it so cute.