dog whistles do they work

hey brainstuff, cristen here. our questionfor the day is “why do dogs tilt their heads?”, and i’ve gotta warn you: this is one ofthose questions where the answer is “no one knows for sure.” but we do have some educated guesses. theytend to fall into three categories: sight, sound, and psychology. sight is the easy one. imagine that you havea snout. at certain angles, it would block certain parts of your vision. we know that pooches can watch human facesand respond appropriately to expressions of emotion, like happiness or anger.

research published over the past couple yearshas found that dogs systematically look at our entire faces, especially our eyes, toget a handle on our emotions. so it makes sense that a dog would tilt itshead to better see your face, and therefore determine whether treats are on the way. but not all dogs have long muzzles. if sightwere the only factor in head tilting, brachycephalic babies like pugs would never tilt. let’s look at sound. dogs’ hearing tendsto be at least twice as sensitive as humans’ – we hear sound waves that occur in therange of about 20 to 20,000 vibrations per second (or hertz).

dogs, depending on their breed and age, canhear sounds of about 40 to 65,000 hertz. meaning they can detect sounds of much higher pitchesfrom much further away. dogs cope with all that audio informationpartially by moving around their pinna: their fuzzy, scritchable outer ears. so some canines– especially those with floppy pinna covering the front of their ear openings – may tilttheir heads to move their pinna and hone in on the sounds you’re making. furthermore, dogs have muscles that let thembetter process sounds in their middle ears. those muscles just happen to be governed bypart of the brainstem called the nucleus ambiguus – yeah, it's called the nucleus ambiguus- which just happens to also govern facial

expressions, gaze, vocalizations, and headmovements. this could mean that dogs reflexively tilttheir heads, sort of as a byproduct of trying to concentrate on a sound. or, as stephen r. lindsay says in his “handbookof applied dog behavior and training,” that brainstem connection could encourage head-tiltingas a form of communication. meaning that when buddy tilts his head, he’strying to say that he’s paying attention to me. he sees me! he really sees me! but, as with all studies into animal behavior,this psychology factor is the most difficult to figure out. some researchers suggest thatdogs tilt their heads so often because they

know we find it stinkin’ adorable. specifically,because we respond with praise or other positive feedback when they tilt. studies have shown that dogs use social cueswith humans that they don’t use with each other, like direct eye contact, to elicitpositive responses. maybe all that head tilting is just the very cutest form of emotionalmanipulation. do you know a head-tilting dog? if so, letus know why you think they tilt – and link us to a video. we always need more dog videos. you can learn what your dog’s yawn meansin this video over here, and about all kinds of animal behavior – human included – athowstuffworks.com.