Whether it’s the sound of food being poured into a bowl or the front door opening, a dog’s ears are on alert. Noises picked up by their highly-attuned senses can also affect their balance. A small study in Austria found that balance is stabilized and destabilized when dogs hear both happy or angry human voices. However, the angry voices were the most destabilizing. The findings are detailed in a study published today in the journal PLOS One.
A stable posture helps dogs (and humans) stand still, walk, and run without falling. In order to maintain stability, the muscles rely on visual cues and the body’s sense of its own position. For humans, external sounds may also influence our body’s stability, with high-pitched frequencies linked to destabilization and white noise linked with stabilization. However, not many studies have examined how sounds affect animals’ posture and stability.
In the new study, a team at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, measured changes in balance in 23 pet dogs upon hearing both happy and angry human voices. To do this, they placed the dogs on a pressure-sensing platform that picked up the dogs’ small movements.
When the team tallied the individual changes of all 23 dogs, the responses varied. Happy voices were linked with destabilization for 57 percent of the dogs. Surprisingly, happy voices were also linked to destabilization for 43 percent of the dogs tested. Angry human voices were associated with the most severe destabilization in 30 percent of dogs, while 70 percent did not show any changes to their balance.
According to the team, these findings suggest that both happy and angry human voices can trigger an emotional response that affects a dog’s balance. However, the sample size is small, so additional research on a larger pool of dogs is needed to draw major conclusions. Future studies could explore if an animal’s prior experience affects its reactions, and if freezing in response to happy voices is related to waiting for their human to approach.
