Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [60]
Still, even without having constant verification of others' mental states, behavior is a good enough guide to allow us to predict an animal's future behavior well enough to interact peacefully and productively. Thus we study what animals do—in particular, what they do that is like what humans do. Since using and following attention is so important in human social interaction, animal cognition researchers look for behaviors that indicate that an animal is using attention.
Dogs have recently trotted gamely into experimental labs, controlled outdoor facilities, and onto data sheets meant to gather information about their abilities at using attention. The dogs are put in controlled settings, usually with one or more experimenters present, and a hidden, desirable object: a toy or a food treat. By varying the cues that they use to inform the dogs about the location of the treat, the experimenters aim to determine which ones are meaningful to the dogs.
The question for researchers is just how far along these stages of the child's development of attention dogs go. Attention begins with gaze, and gaze requires visual capacity. We have already established what dogs can see; we know that they look. Do they understand attention?
Mutual gaze
A gaze is more than it seems: by gazing at someone, one very nearly acts upon him. As my students discover in their field experiments, eye contact comes close to feeling like actual tactile contact. There are undiscussed and yet widely shared rules governing eye contact with others—violation of which may be seen as an act of aggression or of intimacy. We may stare down someone in an attempt to subdue them, or, alternatively, use a long, steady gaze to indicate a more lustful interest.
With a little variation, this could as easily describe how many non-human animals use eye contact. Between apes, eye contact is steeped with importance: it can be used as an aggressive action, and will be avoided by a submissive member of a troop. To stare at a dominant animal is to invite yourself to be attacked. Not only do chimpanzees avoid staring, they avoid being stared at. Subordinate chimps carry themselves despondently, looking down at the ground or their own feet and only furtively glancing around them. In wolves, too, a direct stare may be taken as a threat. So the "aggressive" element of eye contact is the same as with humans. The variation is this: all non-human animals with any meaningful visual capacities will turn their eyes to something of interest—but if the thing-of-interest is a member of their species, the social pressure of gazing usually deflects the gaze of interest.
Thus we can expect that dogs might act somewhat differently than we do with regards to mutual gaze. As dogs evolved from a species in which a stare is most often a threat, we might do best to consider their avoidance of eye contact less an inability than a result of their evolutionary history. But wait! Dogs do look at our faces. They look at each other in the center of the face: at eye level. Most dog owners will report that their dogs gaze at them directly in the eyes.*
So something changed with dogs. While the threat of aggression prevents mutual gaze among wolves, chimpanzees, and monkeys, for dogs the information to be gained by looking us in the eyes is worth enduring any residual, ancient fear that a stare might cause an attack. That humans respond well to a dog gazing at them is a happy circumstance—and our bond with them is thereby strengthened.
To be sure, it may be less "eye contact" than "face contact."* Because of the superficial anatomy of the dog eye—the lack of distinct iris and whites of the eye—specific eye direction can often only be confirmed from closer range than scientists' video cameras have gotten. Generations of dog breeders