Dogs cry more when reunited with their owners

Humans and dogs have a special relationship. Do dogs make more tears when they are emotional? The eyes of our canine companions do well up with tears according to a new study published in Current Biology. It happens often when they are with you.

According to Takefumi Kikusui of Azabu University in Japan, dogs shed tears when they feel good. The discovery of oxytocin is a possible mechanism behind it.

The discovery was made after one of his poodles had puppies. There was a change in the dog's face when he was nursing the puppies. Humans tend to get teary eyes, but those tears don't fall as often.

"That made me think that it might increase tears," Kikusui said.

He said that it is known as the love hormone. From earlier observations, the researchers knew that both dogs and their owners release oxytocin. They ran a reunification experiment to see if it made dogs cry.

They used a standard test to measure tear volume before and after reunification. When they got back together with a familiar person, the tear volume went up.

The dogs' tear volume went up when they were given a drug to help them sleep. When dogs and their people get back together, the release of oxytocin plays a role in tear production.

People gave more positive responses when they saw dogs with tears in their eyes, as a result of being asked to rate pictures of dogs faces with and without tears in them. Dogs' tear production can help forge stronger connections between people and their dogs.

The findings came as a shock. We were excited that this would be a world first because we had never heard of animals crying in happy situations.

Dogs produce tears in happy situations. They don't know if dogs produce tears in response to negative feelings. They don't know if dogs cry when they get back together with other dogs. They hope to find out if this response has a social function. They think it has clear implications for the dog-human bond.

Humans and dogs can form bonds. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556

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1. Kaori Murata, Miho Nagasawa, Tatsushi Onaka, Nobuyuki Kanemaki, Shigeru Nakamura, Kazuo Tsubota, Kazutaka Mogi, Takefumi Kikusui. Increase of tear volume in dogs after reunion with owners is mediated by oxytocin. Current Biology, 2022; 32 (16): R869 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.031