Which animals respond to human facial expressions?

Factual Questions
1

See subject. It was prompted most recently by an occasion when my dog was standing next to a couch I was lying on–thus no change stance or, in this case, movement of my arms or hands. He was staring off into space thinking doggie thoughts. He haphazardly turned and looked at me. I smiled a real, affectionate warm smile. He immediately opened his mouth into a happy pant, brightened his eyes, started flapping his tail. Message sent and received in kind.

Now I know dogs–and some more than others–are especially good at that, presumably by inter-dog/wolf use, and developed to an exquisite level through breeding.

I’m sure some primates do.

Do cats?

Remember, just faces.

2

[ul]
[li]Next time you find a cat staring at you, look back. Look back at them but don’t blink. Observe the reaction.[/li][li]Do it again later with the same cat. But this time, slowly close your eyes. Hold them closed for maybe one-two seconds then open them again. Observe the reaction.[/li][/ul]
The former will make the cat uncomfortable, even threatened. The latter will settle the cat and you will be welcomed as their new slave.

3

While it has been pretty conclusively shown that dogs can read human expressions and gestures to some degree, we do have to be careful not to leap from “It seemed to me like he read my expression” to being sure that must be what happened.

People in general, and pet owners in particular, like to anthropomorphize.

4

True, though scientists have a history of overcompensating for this, denying the intelligence of parrots, etc.

Dogs have evolved over the last how many thousand years to be very adept at manipulating humans in order to get what they want. They can be extremely sensitive to their humans’ moods, and not just by facial expressions. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that scent is involved, since they’re so darn good at it.

Just an anecdote, but I raised a great dane in a co-ed frat. Girls in the frat would take him for walks at night, and would remark about how whenever they felt threatend or afraid (e.g., by a passing stranger), the dog would bristle and walk very closely, pressing against their thighs or hips, which they found very reassuring.

There are myriad other cases where we can tell that dogs are quite sensitive to our moods, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, since they’ve been co-evoloving with us for milenia, in a role where they’re dependent on us.

In any case, I’m convinced that most dogs can read the expressions of their family members, just as dog lovers can read expressions on dogs’ faces and body language. I was surprised to learn that many people can’t see a dog smiling!

Back to the OP’s question, I don’t know of any research, but I would be astonished if the other apes (gorillas, chimps, and bonobos), when raised with humans, couldn’t read our expressions quite well.

We have cats too, and I can read their expressions to an extent, but can’t say whether they pay any attention to our expressions or can read them. They certainly can pick up on mood, though.

How would that be any different than any other cat-human interaction? :wink:

5

Agreed, though in this context I think it’s more likely to go the other way, with anecdotes like: “I got a letter from work that there may be some redundancies, so my pet anaconda coiled itself around me to console me”.

I’ve owned a couple of dogs and it depends what you mean by smiling.

If you mean can I tell whether a dog is in a basically positive state of mind (I don’t want to say happy, but certainly excited) from looking at various cues, then sure, my dogs smiled all the time.

If you mean could I tell a dog’s state of mind just from the shape of its mouth, the way I could with a human, and not even including cues such as the position of its tongue? No, I wouldn’t be confident of that.

6

This is you mimicking cat behavior, not the cat recognizing human emotions through facial expression.

7

My dog thinks you’re right. Yes she does!

8

Macaques will react, but monkey codes for interpreting faces in not the same as ours. For instance, a smile means a display of teeth, which means a threat.

9

You were lying motionless on the couch and then looked at your dog and smiled. On one hand, some believe your dog may have recognized your facial expression as happiness. etc. and reacted with a similar response. On the other, in your dogs mind, when you turned and smiled, the dog may have sensed, “Oh good. He’s not dead after all so he’s still able to feed me.”

10

Most mammals (over something around mouse size) and a lot of birds seem to recognise eyes and faces as being the ‘important’ bits of a human- that is, they look more often at human faces than other parts of human bodies, and react differently to a human simply being visible and a human visibly looking in their direction.

I’d suspect that most animals, especially those that use some form of facial communication themselves, could easily learn to recognise human expressions as corresponding to human actions- after all, a lot of animals can learn to respond to human vocal cues (or can opener noises).

I doubt any instinctively make the connection of which emotion is shown by which expression, any more than we instinctively understand that a chimp showing all its teeth is not happy, but I suspect it could fairly easily be taught or learnt by regular exposure.

11

Animals are individuals; one of our dogs is relatively unmotivated by food but intensely driven by touch.

Regarding parrots, one of my parrots has learned to pull out hairs on my forearm when he wants his head preened. This is not my favorite example of animal communication.

In general, all the animals I’ve known (well, all the mammals and birds anyway) have at least recognized that other species – humans – are sentient and worth trying to communicate/interact with, which is more than I can say for a lot of humans I’ve talked to. The idea that nonhuman animals are mindless machines, who can be mistreated without moral consequence, is an error far more widespread and persistent than mere anthropomorphism.

12

I don’t think it’s the same as responding to a facial expression, but even a mouse can tell if a human is looking at it. A mouse will scurry by you if you are not looking toward it, but will turn and run away if you do look in it’s direction. I’d assume many animals large and small understand the concept of other animals seeing them. It’s not that great a leap for animals to recognize differences in facial expressions from that point.

13

True, but I think many scientists and researchers have gone to far the other direction in denying what is apparently pretty obviously ‘humanlike’ behaviour and traits in animals. I hesitated over the word ‘humanlike’ in that sentence because it would be more accurately described as shared communication between certain animals than something specifically human.

Humans and dogs (for example) have lived in very close contact for several tens of thousands of years by this point and it would be surprising if they couldn’t read human gestures and emotions (facial or otherwise) and its that ease of communication and understanding which makes the partnership between our two distinct species so effective.

14

Agreed.

It’s not just a mouth thing, but then, neither is a human smile.

From a human’s expression, all I can tell is what they want me to think they’re feeling. I don’t give dogs quite that much credit. :wink:

My point is simply that it’s easy (once you’ve learned, and probably easier if you grew up with a dog in the house) to tell a dog’s mental states from its expressions and body language. When two dogs that don’t know each other approach each other, I can pretty clearly see quite a number of things as they pass from wary to receptive to downright enthusiastic (or from wary to aggressive or defensive). My 9 month old pup sends conflicting signals, and I assume he’s just confused about the other dog and has conflicting feelings.

I can see my dog go from looking at me in a querying way to “smiling” and being happy when I gesture “come play”. The changes are both facial and body language.

It’s not rocket science, but people who’ve never paid attention don’t see it.

Oddly, a neighbor who says he’s trained a number of hunting dogs evidently can’t read his own dog’s attitude. That dog hasn’t socialized with other dogs at all, and started out being very agressive toward my pup. But walking together and keeping them apart, giving a chance for them both to chill, I saw his dog make a complete reversal from agressiveness to willingness to play. Yet my neighbor didn’t see it. Go figure. Before I saw that shift, I was doubtful our dogs would learn to play together, but now I’m confident that chances are good.

All of this is beside the OP’s point, but I’m confident that dogs are quite adept at reading us. How they do it might be interesting to study, but I’d rather just play with my pup than study him.

15

I believe we have Kant to thank for helping to spread that idea. However, I don’t find it to really be prevalent today. Oh wait: CUTE animals can’t be mistreated. Ugly ones, all bets are off.

Seriously, I think we’ve come quite a way in the right direction. First, animals are rarely used as beasts of burden any more (in our society, which my comments are limited to). That helped a lot. Second, most people with pets are sensitive to their pets’ well-being (though we do still see a lot of poor chained-up dogs where that’s clearly not the case.) Third, a lot of awareness about animal testing of products and use of animals in scientific research has had a big impact – or at least I get that impression. No doubt we still have a long way to go, and there are difficult ethical questions that intelligent and well-meaning people can disagree on.

16

I’d say it’s pretty much conclusive that dogs can recognise at least some human facial expressions. (Here’s one link of many: When You're Smiling, Your Dog Probably Knows It | Live Science).

In fact, given that dogs’ facial expressions have some similarities to humans’, like opening your mouth fairly wide and titled upwards when they’re sad, head drooping, mouth turned down when they’re sad, etc, it would be somewhat surprising if those expressions were unintelligible to dogs. Especially since they’re an animal that lives alongside humans, evolved alongside humans, and has demonstrated relatively advanced intelligence and communication skills.

I think a dog’s sense of smell and hearing would pick up something as extreme as death. Besides, have you ever seen a dog frantic for its owner to return to it, even after a few minutes? Dogs would be unlikely to sit there and chill out if they thought their owner was dead.

17

FYI: You have incorrectly attributed a quote to me Learjeff.

FTR I don’t believe animals can be mistreated, no matter how dumb they are*, and I have no opinion on whether that is a widespread position.

  • Organisms that are neither smart nor capable of any kind of subjective experience (such as pain) would be a more interesting question for me.
    At this time we have no way of knowing what an organism’s subjective experience is, so I think we should err on the side of caution and assume e.g. every animal with a nervous system experiences pain, and should not be mistreated.
18

Too lazy to research link but there was a fairly recent study that demonstrated that wolves, even tamed wolves with a lot of human interaction experience, have much more limited ability to interpret human expressions than dogs do.

I believe the study also showed that dogs are better at interpreting human expressions than non-human primates are.

Also wanted to say that even reptiles react to a person looking directly at them. Animals mostly have a much larger radius of vision than humans and don’t need to face another animal to see it well. When they focus both eyes on another animal they are typically fixing to attack it (or threatening it by acting like they are going to). So, reaction to a focused stare is pretty universal. Dogs, for example, have to learn through experience that staring humans don’t mean they are being threatened (and some never do).

I am no longer ever surprised when humans misinterpret animal expressions and behaviors. That includes “animal lovers”. Mostly people anthropomorphize/infantilize and do not observe. Bugs the crap out of me, frankly.

19

Yes, and yes. And dogs are the only animals that understand what we mean when we point at something. Even chimps don’t “get it”.

Of course, the OP is written a bit ambiguously. Most mammals would “respond” to certain human facial expressions, but dogs would respond most appropriately. Chimp facial expressions are not quite the same as human ones.

20

this link goes to a BBC Horizon episode called "the secret life of dogs - YouTube
Dogs are pretty damn amazing