Jealousy in dogs

PLoS One. 2014 Jul 23;9(7):e94597. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0094597. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that jealousy is unique to humans, partially because of the complex cognitions often involved in this emotion. However, from a functional perspective, one might expect that an emotion that evolved to protect social bonds from interlopers might exist in other social species, particularly one as cognitively sophisticated as the dog. The current experiment adapted a paradigm from human infant studies to examine jealousy in domestic dogs. We found that dogs exhibited significantly more jealous behaviors (e.g., snapping, getting between the owner and object, pushing/touching the object/owner) when their owners displayed affectionate behaviors towards what appeared to be another dog as compared to nonsocial objects. These results lend support to the hypothesis that jealousy has some "primordial" form that exists in human infants and in at least one other social species besides humans.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal / physiology*
  • Cognition / physiology
  • Dogs / psychology*
  • Human-Animal Bond*
  • Humans
  • Jealousy*
  • Object Attachment*

Grants and funding

This research was not supported by any funding agency. It was performed in CH's position as a professor at UCSD with volunteer subjects.