Study Says Dogs can Get Jealous

Dogs can get jealous if their owner is affectionate towards other doglike objects, new study shows.

The study conducted by Christine Harris and Caroline Prouvost from UC San Diego, challenges the idea that jealousy requires higher cognitive abilities and so can be found only in humans. Turns out that man's best friend, too, can get jealous.

The team says that jealously might have evolved to protect vital resources such as food, care and affection and not just to secure sexual relationships.

"Many people have assumed that jealousy is a social construction of human beings--or that it's an emotion specifically tied to sexual and romantic relationships. Our results challenge these ideas, showing that animals besides ourselves display strong distress whenever a rival usurps a loved one's affection," Christine Harris said in a news release.

In the study, researchers found that dogs snapped or pushed their owner if they found them paying more attention to other dogs. The behavior was only seen when there was a dog-like object in the vicinity, showing that dogs fight for their owners' affection.

Earlier research has found that even six-month old infants feel jealous. Harris and team used the same test that is used to assess jealously in babies and modified it to be used in dogs.

For the research, scientists videotaped dogs as their master interacted with different types of object; such as a realistic looking stuffed dog toys, a jack-lantern and a book. The study included 36 dogs.

Harris and colleagues found that dogs were more likely to snap, get between owner and object or become aggressive when their master interacted with the stuffed dog than the other two objects.

Humans domesticated dogs thousands of years ago and their partnership has helped humans kill large beasts and dogs get an easy access to food. Previous research has shown that dogs can follow human gaze and even voice commands to get to food source. Dogs are even known to yawn when their masters yawn.