Faces more important to humans than dogs

BUDAPEST – Faces are more important to humans than dogs, according to a brain activity study on what the two species look like, published Monday by a team of Hungarian and Mexican researchers.

“The brain imaging findings in the study suggest that faces may be of crucial importance for humans and probably other primates, but not for all mammals, for example, not dogs,” Attila Andics, who led the study at the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. told Agence-France Presse (AFP).

“The two species differ in their visual communication and this is reflected in their brains,” he said.

A team of researchers based in Hungary and Mexico compared how the brains of dogs and humans process visual information.

Different answers

They used scanners to monitor 30 humans and 20 dogs as they watched short videos of dogs and human faces, and the back of their heads.

The brain response results showed that a large part of the human brain’s neural network responds more to faces than non-faces in videos.

Only a small part responded more to images of humans than dogs.

In the dog brains, however, no part responded more to faces, but some parts responded more to dog images than to human images, said the study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“Faces are very important for human visual communication, we have a large dedicated neural network for facial processing when we meet someone,” Andics told AFP.

Previous research has shown that dogs also pay attention to faces, excel at eye contact and reading facial emotions, but also rely on cues such as the other dog’s tail or body posture to communicate.

“When we meet someone, we mainly look at faces,” Andics said.

“Other cues are important for humans as well, but the proportions are different from dogs, when two dogs meet there is no clear focus on their faces,” he said.

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