Knowing what dogs like to watch could help veterinarians assess their vision
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have taken a novel approach to assessing canine vision. Their recent study uses a dog's interest in a variety of video content to better measure the quality of its vision.
VIDEO:
IN THIS VIDEO, A VERY GOOD DOG WATCHES A VIDEO OF ANOTHER DOG GOING FOR A WALK.
view moreCREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON
Ever wonder what kind of TV shows your dog might choose if they could work the remote control? New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine provides some answers, but the study was more interested in solving a longstanding problem in veterinary medicine than turning canine companions into couch potatoes.
According to Freya Mowat, veterinary ophthalmologist and professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine’s department of surgical sciences, researchers wanted to determine factors, including age and vision, that influence a dog’s interest in interacting with video content. Ultimately, the goal of the study, which launched two years ago, was to support development of more sensitive ways to assess canine vision — something that has been sorely lacking in veterinary medicine.
“The method we currently use to assess vision in dogs is a very low bar. In humans, it would be equivalent to saying yes or no if a person was blind,” says Mowat. “We need more sensitive ways to assess vision in dogs, using a dog eye chart equivalent. We speculate that videos have the potential for sustaining a dog’s attention long enough to assess visual function, but we didn’t know what type of content is most engaging and appealing to dogs.”
Published recently in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, the study found that dogs are most engaged when watching videos that feature other animals. Content featuring other dogs was the most popular. But if a National Geographic documentary about canine evolution seems too highbrow for your four-legged friend, Scooby Doo might be a perfectly acceptable option as well.
To better understand the type of content dogs might be most attracted to on screen, Mowat created a web-based questionnaire for dog owners around the globe to report the TV-watching habits of their canine companions.
Participants responded to questions about the types of screens in their homes, how their dogs interacted with screens, the kinds of content their dogs interacted with the most, as well as information about their dog’s age, sex, breed and where they live. They also provided descriptions of their dogs’ behavior when watching videos. Most commonly, dog owners described their pets’ behavior as active — including running, jumping, tracking action on screen and vocalizing — compared with passive behaviors like lying down or sitting. Dog owners also had the option to show their dog(s) four short videos featuring subjects of possible interest, including a panther, a dog, a bird and traffic moving along a road. They were then asked to rate their dog’s interest in each video and how closely the dog tracked the moving objects on the screen.
Mowat received 1,600 responses from dog owners across the world, including from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australasia. Of those respondents, 1,246 ultimately completed the study. The following are some of the most interesting highlights:
- Age and vision were related to how much a dog interacted with a screen.
- Sporting and herding dog breeds appear to watch all content more than other breeds.
- Video content featuring animals was the most popular, with other dogs being by far the most engaging subjects to watch.
- Humans do not appear to be very appealing for dogs to watch, ranking ninth out of 17 predetermined categories.
- Cartoons were engaging for more than 10% of dogs.
- Movement on screens was a strong motivator for screen attention.
Mowat says she plans to build on the results of this study. Future research will focus on the development and optimization of video-based methods that can assess changes in visual attention as dogs age as well as answer questions that could help our four-legged friends age as gracefully as possible.
“We know that poor vision negatively impacts quality of life in older people, but the effect of aging and vision changes in dogs is largely unknown because we can’t accurately assess it,” she says. “Like people, dogs are living longer, and we want to make sure we support a healthier life for them as well.”
Another goal for Mowat is to compare how a dogs’ vision ages compared with the human or humans they share a home with.
“Dogs have a much shorter lifespan than their owner, of course, and if there are emerging environmental or lifestyle factors that influence visual aging, it might well show up in our dogs decades before it shows up in us,” she explains. “Our dogs could be our sentinels — the canine in the proverbial coal mine.”
This study was supported in part by an NIH career development grant to Mowat (K08EY028628), a Companion Animal Fund Grant from the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, a grant from Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc. to the UW–Madison Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and a core grant for Vision Research from the NIH to UW–Madison (P30 EY016665).
JOURNAL
Applied Animal Behaviour Science
ARTICLE TITLE
Screen interaction behavior in companion dogs: Results from a dog owner survey
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
15-Jan-2024
Big dogs versus small dogs: Which sizes face higher risks of which diseases?
New study could aid understanding of why smaller dogs tend to live longer
Peer-Reviewed PublicationIMAGE:
LARGE DOG
view moreCREDIT: PHOTO BY VALERIA BOLTNEVA ON PEXELS
A study of more than 25,000 U.S. dogs and 238 breeds has linked dog size to varying patterns of risk for health conditions over the course of a dog’s lifespan. Yunbi Nam of the University of Washington, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 17.
On average, smaller dogs tend to live longer than larger dogs. Evidence suggests that larger dogs do not tend to have more health conditions, but that dogs of different sizes may face different levels of risk for different conditions. However, more research is needed to clarify links between dog age, size, and disease prevalence.
To deepen understanding, Nam and colleagues analyzed survey data on 27,541 dogs representing 238 breeds, as reported by dog owners participating in the ongoing Dog Aging Project.
Overall, larger dogs in the study were more likely to have faced certain types of health conditions at some point in their lives, including cancer, bone-related disease, gastrointestinal problems, ear/nose/throat issues, neurological and endocrine conditions, and infectious diseases. Meanwhile, smaller dogs were more likely to have experienced ocular, cardiac, liver/pancreas and respiratory diseases. History of kidney/urinary disease did not differ significantly for larger versus smaller dogs.
For many types of conditions—including cancer, ocular, cardiac, orthopedic, and ear/nose/throat conditions—different dog sizes were associated with differing patterns of risk over the course of a dog’s lifespan.
The results held up even after the researchers statistically accounted for the dogs’ sex, where they lived, and whether they were purebred or mixed-breed.
The researchers note that this study does not confirm any causal relationship between dog size, age, and disease. Still, the findings could help lead to deeper understanding of the types of conditions that may underlie the lower lifespan of larger dogs. For instance, within the disease categories explored in this study, future research could home in on age and size patterns associated with specific conditions.
The authors add: “These results provide insights into the disease categories that may contribute to reduced lifespan in larger dogs and suggest multiple further avenues for further exploration.”
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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295840
Citation: Nam Y, White M, Karlsson EK, Creevy KE, Promislow DEL, McClelland RL, et al. (2024) Dog size and patterns of disease history across the canine age spectrum: Results from the Dog Aging Project. PLoS ONE 19(1): e0295840. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295840
Author Countries: USA
Funding: This research is based on publicly available data collected by the Dog Aging Project, which is supported by U19 grant AG057377 from the National Institute on Aging, a part of the National Institutes of Health, and by additional grants and private donations. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
JOURNAL
PLoS ONE
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Animals
ARTICLE TITLE
Dog size and patterns of disease history across the canine age spectrum: Results from the Dog Aging Project
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
17-Jan-2024
