3 ms·

I obviously don't know your relationship with dogs, but my initial reaction was that anybody who knows them well would disagree; not only do they have a sense o

I obviously don't know your relationship with dogs, but my initial reaction was that anybody who knows them well would disagree; not only do they have a sense of humour but they will also grin to show it. Admittedly, this is can be somewhat off-putting because the smile doesn't reach their eyes, so perhaps they are just mimicking us, but whatever it is they are indicating an understanding that a joke is intended, beyond normal happiness and play.

Mordisquitos 5y ago
On the one hand, we cannot assume that animal expressions have any relation to similar expressions in humans. See for example how the misunderstanding of facial expressions between great apes and humans (in both directions) has often lead to violence, and they're our closest relatives. However, I have a pet* theory that the long evolutionary history of dogs with humans has little by little made their facial expressions converge towards reasonable approximations of human expressions. Which of the ancestors of modern dogs were more likely to survive in the company of humans: those whose expression looked human-happy when the dog was feeling a positive canine emotion? Or those whose expression looked human-happy when they were feeling aggressive, fearful, disappointed, etc? * No pun intended
- ludamad 5y ago
  I'm always curious with just how much my husky uses her paw to "activate" things. We definitely reinforce the notion by helping her out with whatever she paws, but it does seem like a cultural thing she's learned rather than the more dextrous bite they have. In this case it's pretty mundane probably, she's using something more expressive to humans and it's happened to work well, but it still imparts on me that a dog living among humans picks up some pretty different signalling
thechao 5y ago
My current dog is awesome but he does not have a sense of humor. Whenever I play jokes on him, he just gets concerned.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

On the one hand, we cannot assume that animal expressions have any relation to similar expressions in humans. See for example how the misunderstanding of facial expressions between great apes and humans (in both directions) has often lead to violence, and they're our closest relatives. However, I have a pet* theory that the long evolutionary history of dogs with humans has little by little made their facial expressions converge towards reasonable approximations of human expressions. Which of the ancestors of modern dogs were more likely to survive in the company of humans: those whose expression looked human-happy when the dog was feeling a positive canine emotion? Or those whose expression looked human-happy when they were feeling aggressive, fearful, disappointed, etc? * No pun intended

ludamad 5y ago
I'm always curious with just how much my husky uses her paw to "activate" things. We definitely reinforce the notion by helping her out with whatever she paws, but it does seem like a cultural thing she's learned rather than the more dextrous bite they have. In this case it's pretty mundane probably, she's using something more expressive to humans and it's happened to work well, but it still imparts on me that a dog living among humans picks up some pretty different signalling

thechao 5y ago

My current dog is awesome but he does not have a sense of humor. Whenever I play jokes on him, he just gets concerned.