See subject. Is it learned? For comparison, somewhere I read that dogs learn to pay more attention to the left side of your face–something to do with we’re more expressive there.
I also say “some” because stupid dogs (and some dog breeds as a whole)–those to whom human interaction is a catch-as-catch-can thing–simply don’t do it, in my experience.
Do chimps, or any other animal (parrots I think always cock their heads this way and that) do it?
I seem to recall chimps puzzling things out and tilting their heads, or maybe that’s just a memory of the first climax of intelligence in 2001.
It;s called non verbal communication; Huskies, Malamutes and other breeds have even developed facial markings to make it easier for us to interpret them.
This seems possible. Dogs have good and very directional hearing. By cocking their head, they can look at you with both eyes, and put your mouth in the sweet spot of one of their ears. IME dogs that cock their heads have either stand-up ears, or ears where the tips flop, but still leave a clear “horn” to the side/front. (like, say, a Labradore Retriever) I can’t recall ever seeing a droopy eared dog (like a Basset Hound) cock their head at me.
I don’t remember if she used head-tilting as an example, but Alexandra Horowitz, cognitive scientist and author of Inside of a Dog, has written that, although dogs have better hearing than we do, and can hear higher frequencies, they are NOT as good as humans are at determining the direction from which sound is coming. This seems counter-intuitive, especially when they swivel those big ears around, but maybe they need to swivel the ears around to search out the source of some sound they are hearing.
Again, not sure how that applies to head-tilting per se, which usually seems to be directed at something right in front of the dog.
That said, the head tilt is just as cute when a pit bull does it. (Skip ahead to 0:33 for a frenzy of head-tilting).
Right, I find my basenjis assume this pose when they’re trying to figure out a novel sound - what it is, and, especially, where it’s coming from. They’re triangulating, like an owl.
I grew up with dachshunds and they did this all the time. It was even mentioned in books as a typical trait for the dachs. It seemed to me as if they were saying “I hear you. What are you trying to say?”
Other breeds don’t seem to do it at all, and they have the same ‘flappy’ ears. My sisters’ Kooiker for instance. Never noticed it anyway.
