They say the dog is man’s best friend, and now that bond so strong found a better scientific explanation. In Japan, a team of researchers conducted experiments and found that during the gaze between dogs and their owners a similar hormonal process that occurs between mothers and children are active.
The work is published in the journal Science, American Association for the Advancement of Sciences this week. We carried out the team led by Miho Nagasawa, Japanese Azabu University. And look how he detected between the dog and its owner fires in both species oxytocin levels in the brain, a hormone related to sexual behavior patterns and paternal and maternal.
The -known oxytocin popularly as “love hormone” – also acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain and is considered to have an important role in the recognition and establishment of social bonds and the formation of trust relationships between people
<. p> To conduct this research, scientists put in a room with several dogs with their owners and documented every interaction between them for 30 minutes. Then measured the levels of oxytocin in both the urine of dogs and their owners in and found that sustained eye contact between them raised hormone levels in the brains of both species.
a second experiment, the researchers sprayed oxytocin in the noses of some dogs and placed in a room with their owners and some unknown. The result? The animals increased the time they looked to their owners and, after half an hour, oxytocin levels rose by owners of dogs treated.
It was already known that dogs are descended from wolves, to from a process of domestication that would have occurred first in Asia, possibly China, and then in Europe between 18,800 and 32,100 years. The dogs were already integrated with humans 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, before agriculture developed. That link these years also explains why there are 800 breeds of dogs (more than any other animal in the world).
Another part of the Japanese research was to find out what happens with wolves and hormone levels. It was found that wolves are not the same response activation of oxytocin hormone. Therefore, researchers suggest that this mechanism of connection between man and dog developed during the domestication process. “The same connection mechanism, based on the increase of oxytocin to look, it strengthens the emotional bonds between mothers and their children, helps to also regulate the relationship between dogs and their owners,” they explained.
In previous investigations it was found that oxytocin was involved in the recognition and social interactions. Now, we know that when a dog and his master look into his eyes, enjoying a release of oxytocin. This explains why dogs are familiar with human gestures that are much harder to learn for great apes or wolves.
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