Dogs may have evolved 'puppy-dog eyes' to tug at our hearts

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

The mournful, pleading, eyebrows-up expression dogs make is so familiar that we have made it into an idiom: puppy-dog eyes.

A study suggests it’s yet another example of dogs’ remarkable ability to communicate with people, one that evolved as the animals were domesticated from ancient wolves at least 15,000 years ago.

A specific muscle causes the inner-eyebrow raise that makes dogs’ eyes appear bigger and more infant-like and produces a look similar to one humans make when sad. The researchers found that while six deceased dogs they dissected uniformly possessed this muscle, four dissected wolves either did not have it or barely did. They also found that 27 shelter dogs in the United Kingdom did the eyebrow-raise far more often and intensely when interacting with strangers than did nine wolves at two U.K. wildlife parks.

This suggests ancient canines with expressive eyebrows might have elicited nurturing from humans, the authors write, and that care would have given the animals a selection advantage that allowed them to pass on puppy-dog eyes to their descendants. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

[ooky]

1. That's the look I get when I'm eating and feel a snout on my leg

and look down.

[TEB]

9. I know

And those eyes with our dogs make me share what I’m eating oh geez they work me I am so weak.

[smirkymonkey]

2. Well, it definitely works!

Some of the little imps really know how to work it too! They can make themselves irresistible. You can't say "no" to them.

[tonedevil]

3. They have to do something to compete...

with cats and their meows that mimic a baby crying.

[LakeArenal]

4. Mr Lake always says: Oh d'em eyes!

[Caliman73]

5. I would not doubt it at all.

Dogs and cats for that matter, are quite intelligent and I am sure learned the behavior quite early in the domestication process. No doubt this was a survival skill that got passed on throughout the millennia.

[Ohiogal]

6. This

is my dog’s “Put that book down and pay attention to ME” look

[nycbos]

7. Awwww

[smirkymonkey]

10. Awww!

How can you resist that sweet little face and those soulful eyes?

[redwitch]

8. Our neighbors have a sweet mutt who waits daily for the carrot portal to open.

The carrot 🥕 portal is our back door. Tela is so expressive when she is seeking carrots. My husband recently took one look at her face and immediately drove to the store to get carrots.

[mr_lebowski]

11. It's incorrect to imply that 'evolution' is an active process on the part of the animal ...

I'm glad that article body explains what actually likely happened ... that humans in essence selectively bred for this trait ... but that's very different from dogs 'deciding to evolve' in this fashion, as the headline implies.

[Progressive dog]

12. Humans selected for the dog traits

so, dogs are genetically modified from a type of wolf.