i have two adorable dogs. they are soo great and i enjoy every minute spent with them.
when i arrive home at the end of a long day, my dogs come rushing to the door to say hello, wagging their tales furiously. something that i have always noticed, but have never really thought about investigating in any depth, is that when my dogs rush to greet me, their faces are slightly different. their ears go back and they look very slightly different. i was simply wondering, is this change in facial appearence due to their emotions being released and their facial muscles contracting (and relaxing) as a result or are my dogs just wierd(er)
I’ve noticed that my dog, a Pomeranian, will open his mouth when happy (like when I’m scratching him behind the ear) in what looks for all the world like a big Joker smile. I once made fun of because of it (Bad dog! Trying to kill Batman!) but I don’t think he got the joke.
Also, when he first sees me after work, he goes nuts (like most dogs when master comes home) and has this weird king of grimace on his face, sort of like he’s biting one of lips.
One of my dogs very definitely smiles whenever things go her way. She’s a border collie/black lab mix. My german shephard has never once made a similar expression.
I debated opening a thread like this, about if non-human animals smiled due to happiness.
Primates, Canines, and perhaps Raccoons all smile due to an emotional state. Though what this means to a social organism is debatable.
I don’t pretend to offer a scientific answer, but I think my dog sure smiles! If they can really have emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, etc.), why wouldn’t they also be able to express those emotions through facial manifestations?
Dogs can also show their feelings with their eyes 
And let me tell you that most of them are d* good at it!
Once, I yelled at my late and beloved nephew Big Dumb Max, the Happy Golden Retriever for begging at the table. His face fell. His smile disappeared.
Yes, dogs do smile. Cats sort of smile too, but they do not have the control over their facial muscles that dogs do. Cats use their eyes. When a cat is happy, it will squint at you.
I thought this thread was going to be about baring of teeth, which usually signifies agression in non-human animals.
I asked my German Shepherd and Beagle your question in a really soft voice while scratching them and they both smiled at me and answered “yes.” Well, maybe not that last part. I really notice the ‘smiling’ when we get back from a long walk or when I come home.
When I first got Presley from the pound, our vet recomended the book ‘Good owners, good pets’ or something like that. The dude that wrote that is a vet, and he claims it’s a smile.
My cat also seems to smile - the corners of her mouth widen distinctly - when being stroked, or when greeting us after a protracted absence.
I’d say that both my dogs smile. That’s about it for facial expressions from the black lab-mix (of course you still can see other emotions in her eyes), but the pug’s face changes with happiness, sadness, fear, anger, boredom and probably other states.
not to poop on the party, but why would other animals conform to human emoting? i mean, i hardly wag my ass when happy. nor do i arch, hiss, and spit when threatened.
jb
These expressions seem to correspond with situations that would make them happy, so it seems logical.
but jb_farley, why not? it seems every bit as possible that they do smile, as they dont. anyway, if we had a tail, maybe we woulsd wag it when we were happy
It is also part of the “submissive” body language when approaching a higher ranking pack member. The extension of the sides of the mouth make vocalizations higher pitched, and therefore more like an immature pup, and that kicks in the behavioural prohibitions against injuring a defenceless pack member.
But Duchess smiles when she is happy.
Who’s the happy doggie? You’re the happy doggie! Happy doggie wanna cookie? Good doggie…
Though interestingly, have you ever been really scared? Like to the point of nearly pooping your pants scared? I have once, during a break-in to my house, and my hackles actually went up: the skin from my neck to my coccyx puckered up, and all the hair on the back and centre of my head stood up on end. A bit like a cat. It’s never happened before or since.
I’m not so sure that dogs smile.
Hand-feeding dolphins is a bona fide tourist industry in my state. Connected to this tourism, I read that while people think that the dolphins are smiling, we’re simply projecting our own human feelings.
The smile-like expression dolphins display is apparently reflective of aggression, rather than of human joy.
Dolphins are not dogs. The bottle-nosed dolphin has a permanent grin on their face which has nothing to do with their emotional state. The toothed whales rely far more on vocalizations for communication than on body language. Given breeding for the pet trade over a few centuries, I think we could have a dolphin that makes a laughing sound when its owner comes home.
We have been breeding dogs as companions for a good twenty thousand years, and they brought along a lot of facial expressions from their wolf days. The servile smile-like facial expression is used in wolf packs to defuse agression, and it is similar enough to the human expression of joy to ensure that it was not bred out of the creature.
Dogs smile because it has amused humans to see them smile for millenia.