Article

Dog-laughter: Recorded playback reduces stress related behavior in shelter dogs

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Abstract

During play encounters dogs vocalize using at least four distinct patterns; barks, growls, whines, and a breathy pronounced forced exhalation (dog-laugh) (Simonet, 2001). Further, dog-laughs are used to initiate play. Upon hearing a dog-laugh subjects use a play- face and chase or play-bow with the individual producing the dog-laugh, whether the individual is dog or human (Simonet, 2001). This study employs a recorded playback of the dog-laugh vocalization, investigating how this vocalization ameliorates dog stress upon entry to and duration of stay at a mid-size county animal shelter. Stress is measured by an ethogram of behaviors (including, panting, salivating, pacing, barking, cowering, lunging, play-bows, sitting, orienting, and lying down) and by recording the ambient noise level of the kennel. This experiment uses a within subjects cross-over design comparing the same dogs to themselves in two different conditions; baseline condition - no playback, and the experimental condition - playback. Dogs experienced a significant reduction of stress behaviors during dog-laugh playback. In addition, during the experimental condition dogs expressed an increase in pro-social behaviors such as, approach and lip licking (Bekoff & Allen, 1998). This study suggests that the dog-laugh vocalization diffuses stress related behavior and initiates pro-social behavior in shelter dogs, thus potentially reducing residency time.

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... Taken together, these results provide strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that vocalizations in these two ranges signal positive and negative affect, respectively. Simonet (2005) suggested that dogs also produce laugh-like vocalizations that differ structurally from the regular panting sounds that are given when dogs are in locomotion. She found some evidence that playback of these laugh-like vocalizations to dogs in animal shelters reduced stress-related behaviors and induced play-soliciting behaviors such as the play bow (Simonet 2005). ...
... Simonet (2005) suggested that dogs also produce laugh-like vocalizations that differ structurally from the regular panting sounds that are given when dogs are in locomotion. She found some evidence that playback of these laugh-like vocalizations to dogs in animal shelters reduced stress-related behaviors and induced play-soliciting behaviors such as the play bow (Simonet 2005). In another study on dog vocalizations, found that barks that occurred in different contexts differed in acoustic parameters such as harmonic-tonoise ratio and frequency range. ...
... Like human laughter, these calls can also be induced and amplified through 'tickling' with human hand movements that mimic rough-and-tumble play (Panksepp 2007). Non-human primates have also been reported to exhibit 'laughter-like' pants when engaged in social play and when tickled (chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, Barbary macaques, (Simonet et al. 2005). In light of these studies and the current findings, it is possible that barks produced during play could represent a form of 'laughter' in pigs. ...
Article
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Alarm calls given by adults and juveniles sometimes elicit different responses in receivers, with the alarm calls of adults being more provocative than those of juveniles. We examined this possibility in the domestic pig, Sus scrofa domesticus. We hypothesized that alarm barks given by adults and juveniles would differ acoustically, and that weaned juvenile pigs would respond more strongly to the barks of adult sows than they would to the barks of peers. In support of our hypothesis, we found that the barks of adult sows were louder and had lower values for peak frequency parameters than those of juveniles. We conducted a playback experiment and found that juvenile pigs responded as if the barks of unfamiliar sows were more alarming than the barks of unfamiliar juvenile pigs or ambient noise (control sound), even after controlling for playback volume. We conclude that differences in acoustic morphology enable domestic pigs to discriminate between barks of adult sows and juveniles, with the former evoking a stronger response.
... Le rire n'est pas propre seulement à l'espèce humaine -les primates (les chimpanzés, les gorilles et les orangs-outans), les dauphins, les chiens et même les rats rient aussi (Simonet, Versteeg & Storie 2005;Wöhr & Schwarting 2007;Davila Ross, Owren & Zimmermann 2009). ...
Article
The article examines the origin of the words denoting ‘laugh’ and ‘laughter’ in the Indo-European languages. The semantic changes are analyzed on the basis of the relation ‘A’ > ‘laugh, laughter’, A being the source meaning. The descendants of a single root with primary meaning ‘laugh’ are spread out in several Indo-European languages: the root *smey-. Expectedly, the most common source of the words for laugh are some primary concepts related to different sounds. Other semantic developments that have been found are from words with primary meaning ‘show one’s teeth, make a grimace’, ‘brilliant, joy’, ‘pleasure’ and ‘burst’, the latter giving also rise to expressions such as English ‘burst in laugh’.
... Moreover, some dogs may have perceived their interaction with the object as a playing activity, and the results could indicate a stronger inclination for playfulness in younger individuals. Playing is a sign of positive emotional states [54][55][56] , which are fundamental for the individual's quality of life and should therefore be monitored in senior dogs 57 . Nevertheless, despite a significant difference between young and old dogs, according to our results, the variable Object interaction in the Novel object subtest displays a re-test effect; therefore, this variable should not be coded over time. ...
Article
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The prolonged lifespan of companion dogs has resulted in increased behavioural and physical challenges linked to old age. The development of behavioural tests to identify and monitor age‑related differences has begun. However, standardised testing requires validation. The present study aimed to assess external validity, interobserver reliability, and test–retest reliability of an indoor test battery for the rapid assessment of age‑related behavioural differences in dogs. Two experimenters tested young dogs (N = 20, mean age ± SD = 2.7 ± 0.4 years) and old dogs (N = 18, mean age ± SD = 11.8 ± 1.3 years) in the test battery once and then again after two weeks. Our results found external validity for two subtests out of six. On both test occasions, old dogs committed more errors than young dogs in a memory subtest and showed more object avoidance when encountering a novel object. Interobserver reliability and test–retest reliability was high. We conclude that the Memory and Novel object subtests are valid and reliable for monitoring age‑related memory performance and object neophobic differences in dogs.
... Other primates and even non-primate mammals, such as dogs and rats, produce protolaughter during play (Bryant & Aktipis, 2014;Davila Ross et al., 2009;Panksepp, 2007;Simonet et al., 2005;Vettin & Todt, 2005). As a play signal, laughter conveys harmless intentions (much like smiles) and helps initiate and prolong play by signaling the nonseriousness of the play behaviors (Pellis & Pellis, 1996) and influencing the affective state of the recipient (Owren & Bachorowski, 2003). ...
Article
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Laughter and smiles co-occur and accomplish similar communicative tasks. Certain smiles and laughter elicit positive affect in the sender and the recipient, serving as social rewards. Other smiles and laughter lack this positivity but retain a message of harmlessness and affiliation that lubricates the interaction. And finally, some smiles and laughter convey disapproval or dominance in a less serious way than more overt displays (e.g., frowns). But work on the social functions of smiles and laughter has progressed independently. We ask whether smiles and laughter are judged as more alike if they are high on the same social functional dimensions. First, online participants’ (N = 244) judged the similarity of a set of validated reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles to each other, resulting in a 2-dimensional semantic smile space. Then we inserted laughter clips (rated on the social functional dimensions in prior work) into the semantic smile space using new participants’ (N = 1089) responses on a smile-laughter similarity task. The laugh samples grouped in the smile space according to their previously determined social function, suggesting participants’ judgments about smile-laughter similarity were partly guided by the reward, affiliation, and dominance values of the displays. Trial-level analyses indicate reward and affiliation smiles were most likely to be matched to reward and affiliation laughs, respectively, but dominance displays were more complicated. This suggests perceivers judge the meaning of smiles and laughs along reward, affiliation, and dominance dimensions even without verbal prompts. It also deepens our understanding of the functional overlap of smiles and laughter.
... Auditory stimuli often in the form of conspecific vocalisations have been used in environmental enrichment studies (Rukstalis and French 2005;Simonet et al. 2005;Kelling et al. 2012). However, if such calls are used frequently with no contingency to the behavioural response, then animals will learn to habituate to such calls, change its behaviour or even be stressed by the calls (Harris and Haskell 2013;Massen et al. 2014). ...
Chapter
This chapter focuses on the informal learning opportunities that arise from environmental enrichment and what their consequences are for the animal. Environmental enrichment typically involves the addition of novel stimuli to a captive animal's environment in an attempt to improve animal welfare for example, the provision of toys to an enclosure. All of social, occupation or cognitive, physical, sensory, and nutritional categories of environmental enrichment if managed properly can provide informal learning opportunities for animals. The arrival of internet video calling has created a number of extremely interesting social enrichment opportunities; for example, the ability of animals of the same species to interact visually and auditory in a remote manner. In the case of cognitive enrichment, food is often used to lure the animal into using the enrichment; it is then less clear whether the primary reinforcement is the food or the learning opportunity.
... Indeed, it was shown that pen size and space allowance may influence older dogs' movements, visibility in a pen, and consequent likelihood for adoption (Normando, Salvadoretti, Marinelli, Mongillo, & Bono, 2009). Recent studies have illustrated the possibility of enrichment for sheltered dogs by methods that resemble dogs' communicative patterns, that is, by adding visual, auditory, and olfactory signals in the environment (Graham, Wells, & Hepper, 2005a, 2005b Simonet, Versteeg, & Storie, 2005; Tod, Brander, & Waran, 2005; Wells, Graham, & Hepper, 2002 ), but none of these studies analyzed the social behavior between dogs in groups and compatibility of penmates in shelters. However, this can be important for dogs who may spend longer time in a shelter, sometimes several years. ...
Article
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