Dogs prefer certain TV shows depending on whether their personality is nervous or excitable, researchers in the US have revealed.
Auburn University experts in Alabama recruited 453 dogs, aged from four months to 16 years old, and their owners to record their responses to different TV shows.
“The survey investigated trends in the dogs’ TV viewing habits, including whether the owner tried to teach the dog to watch TV, the average number of hours per week the owner’s TV is switched on, and the average number of seconds the dog pays attention to the TV,” researchers told The Times.
“Dogs who were more excitable were more likely to exhibit behaviours suggesting an expectation that the television stimulus exists in the 3D environment,” said the researchers, whose study was published in Scientific Reports.
“Furthermore, dogs who displayed more fearful tendencies were more likely to respond to the non-animal stimuli, for example, car [or] doorbell.”
Last year, scientists revealed the trick to getting your pet dog to understand what you are saying. The research, published in October, claimed people should try speaking a little bit slower.
It concludes that dogs’ comprehension of human speech relies on a slower tempo. Despite not being able to produce human sounds, man’s best friend is capable of responding to human speech.
When people talk slowly, it matches the receptive abilities of animals, allowing dogs to better understand commands, researchers say.
Writing in the Plos Biology journal, the authors said: “Comparative exploration of neural and behavioural responses to speech reveals that comprehension in dogs relies on a slower speech rhythm tracking than humans’, even though dogs are equally sensitive to speech content and prosody.”
They hypothesise that people may adjust their speech rate “as means to improve communication efficacy”.
Eloise Deaux, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and colleagues analysed the vocal sounds of 30 dogs, and the sounds of 27 humans across five languages speaking to other people, and 22 humans across those languages speaking to dogs.
