|
Even
Boy Puppies Have Manners
They Let Girl Puppies Win
Now this is just too cute! We always say that you can learn much from dogs and animals and this latest study shows
that yet again that dogs, just puppies even, have much to teach us. Ok, so maybe it sounds sexist, letting girls
win or come first in this day and age of PC, but I am a bit of a believer in old fashioned manners and
etiquette.
In this study out of the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, which studied 'play data' from
puppies between 3 and 40 weeks old from four dog breeds: a shepherd mix, Labrador retriever, Doberman pincher and
malamute. They examined how the puppies played with members of their own sex as well as with the opposite
sex. What they found was that young male dogs
playing with female pups will often let the females win, even if the males have a physical advantage.
Male dogs sometimes place themselves in potentially
disadvantageous positions that could make them more vulnerable to attack, and researchers suspect the opportunity
to play may be more important to them than winning.
The gentlemanly dog behavior is even accompanied with a
bow.
"We found that self-handicapping tends to occur in
conjunction with play bows," lead author Camille Ward said. "A play bow is a signal that dogs use when they
want to communicate playful intentions to a potential play partner."
Females were more likely than males to initiate play with
their own sex, but that may be to stave off more vicious behavior later.
"Because adult female-female aggression, when it occurs,
can generally be more intense than female-male aggression, we suggest that females may use play with other
females as one way to practice threat and appeasement signals that may serve to ritualize aggression and limit
overt aggression later on," said Ward, whose findings are published in this month's Animal
Behavior.
While males were less likely to initiate play with other
males, they seemed eager to play with females, and would go to all sorts of lengths to keep the play
going.
The male puppies, for example, would sometimes lick the
muzzles of their opponents, giving the female a chance to bite them in a vulnerable position. They would also
even completely drop to the ground from a moving, standing or sitting position, looking like a boxer down for
the count.
They might lose the game in the short run, but they could
win at love in the future.
"We know that in feral dog populations, female mate choice
plays a role in male mating success," said Ward. "Perhaps males use self-handicapping with females in order to
learn more about them and to form close relationships with them -- relationships that might later help males to
secure future mating opportunities." ( Discovery)
Maybe this is something else that dogs can teach us, in our crazy
world where everything is supposed to be even and equal and all most people want to do is just get ahead of
everyone else. There's nothing wrong with people being equal but there's also nothing wrong with some old fashioned
manners. so learn from the puppies, give a bit now and you may come in way ahead in the
longrun!
Back
to Top
###
| 
