Madrid. The behavioral and emotional changes that dogs show after the death of another dog in the same household could be indicative of grief.
It is the result of a survey applied to 426 Italian dog owners and published in the magazine Scientific Reports.
Although grieving behaviors have been observed in various animals, such as birds and elephants, it is not clear whether domestic dogs grieve.
Researcher Federica Pirrone and her colleagues at the University of Milan surveyed adults whose pet had died and who owned at least one other dog. Owners (of whom 66 percent had lost their pet more than a year before the study) were asked about any behavioral changes in the living individual. In addition, the owners described the previous relationship between their dogs and their own levels of distress after the duel.
It found that 86 percent of owners noted negative changes in the surviving dog’s behavior, with 32 percent reporting the changes lasting between two and six months and 25 percent reporting lasting more than six months.
When asked to describe behavioral changes, 67 percent of owners said the surviving dog sought more attention, 57 percent said it played less and 46 percent said it became less active.
Meanwhile, 35 percent of owners said the surviving dog slept more and became more fearful, 32 percent said it ate less, and 30 reported increased whining or barking. Prior to the loss of their pet, 93 percent of owners stated that their dogs had lived together for more than a year, and 69 percent described their relationship as friendly.
Negative behavior changes
The researchers found that while the duration of cohabitation between two dogs did not influence the behavior of survivors, having a friendly relationship with the deceased dog and having a grieving owner made negative behavior changes more likely. And fear.
This suggests that the negative behavioral and emotional disturbances observed in the surviving dogs could be due to both a grief reaction in response to the loss of their companion and a grief reaction from their owners.
The authors conclude that distress-like responses among dogs are potentially an important and overlooked pet welfare issue.
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