The loss of a loved one can have a profound effect on people, affecting everything from sleep to cravings. Now, researchers say they have found similar behavioral changes in dogs that have lost their canine companions.
While the team said it was unclear whether the findings could be described as distressing, they say the work is likely to indicate an overlooked welfare issue.
Dr Federica Pirrone from the University of Milan, one of the study’s authors, said: ‘Dogs are highly emotional animals, they develop very close relationships with familiar group members. This means that they can be very distressed if one of them dies and efforts need to be made to help them cope with this distress.”
Expression of grief is not unique to humans: great apes, dolphins, elephants and birds are among the species observed to participate in rituals around death and to mourn.
Writing in the journal Scientific ReportsPirrone and colleagues describe how they analyzed the responses of 426 adults in Italy who completed an online “mourning dog questionnaire” to investigate how canines experience pain.
All participants experienced the loss of one of their dogs while at least one other dog was still alive, and the questionnaire looked at the behavior and feelings of the owners and their surviving dogs. after death.
The results showed that 86% of owners said their surviving dogs changed behavior following the death of another dog in the home.
“Overall, the dogs were reported to play and eat less, sleep more, and seek the owner’s attention more,” Pirrone said. She said the results did not appear to be affected by the level of attachment between owners and their dogs or whether they killed their pets, suggesting that owners are not simply forecasting pain. their sadness.
The team said these changes were not related to how long the dogs had lived together or whether the surviving dogs had seen the corpse.
The researchers say there are several explanations for this finding, including that death may disrupt the general behavior of living dogs.
In support of this hypothesis, we found that if dogs are shared food throughout life, the surviving dog is more likely to have reduced activity levels and more sleep, the authors write. after death.
The results also showed stronger behavioral changes for dogs that were reported to have had a friendly relationship with the deceased animal, or have been their parent or child.
“Most likely this means that the surviving dog has lost an attachment figure who provides safety and security,” says Pirrone.
Human emotions may also play a role: an increase in the fear levels of surviving dogs and a decrease in food consumption is associated with greater distress, anger, and trauma. in the owner before death.
“This means that there may have been some form of emotional contagion or fear contagion in society, which often occurs in social species as part of adaptive coping strategies,” says Pirrone. respond to potentially hazardous situations”. However, the team says the finding could also be related to owners’ perceptions of the behavior or emotions of living dogs.
Pirrone says the definition of “grief” in dogs, as well as for young children, is not straightforward.
“Dogs form emotional bonds, and so the loss of a companion animal in the home can cause behavioral changes, like the changes we documented,” she said. repeated in our study, which overlaps with what we generally understand as grief and mourning. “Of course, based on our results, we still can’t tell if these dogs are just responding to the ‘loss’ of a branch or their ‘death’.”
Professor Samantha Hurn, a social anthropologist at the University of Exeter, said it was important to understand what a dog might go through following the death of a canine companion, but added The study has limitations, including that owners can’t always read dog behavior. , while the use of a scale-related questionnaire for such a subjective issue may limit the conclusions that can be drawn.
“In the course of my own research, I have experienced many dogs and other animals behaving in very different ways, but nonetheless those ways suggest to me that they are affected,” she says. mentally affected by the death of a dear companion.”
