Puppy Love Report

Puppy Love

What is the bond between humans and dogs? A Japanese scientist named Miho Nagasawa has just about the answer. His answer was to do something with the “Cuddle Chemical” The scientific name of the so called ‘Cuddle Chemical’ is Oxytocin. Oxytocin is a matter in the blood that motivates bonding within the person and animal.

Oxytocin can increase. For example, when a human looks deeply into the eyes of a dog, the oxytocin or cuddle chemical increases or if a mother feeds her baby, the oxytocin increases.

Miho Nagasawa wanted to understand better about the cuddle chemical and conducted an experiment. At the beginning of the experiment, the scientists tested the levels of oxytocin before both human and dog interacted. In a room a human and a dog were there all by themselves. They were alone in the room because they had to interact with each other so that the scientists could test the levels of Oxytocin once they interact. What did they do in the room? Well, they had to interact with each other so the human talked to the dog, petted the dog and looked into the dog’s eyes. This increased the Oxytocin between them. They interacted because the scientists outside the room, recorded the levels of cuddle chemical between them.

Researchers found out that the levels of oxytocin between them were higher when they interacted with each other than when they didn’t. However, the test results were higher when the human looked at the dog’s eyes than when they conversed and petted. This is what one of the investigators wrote, “The duration of the dog to owner gaze…. significantly explained the oxytocin change ratio,” Miho Nagasawa conducted the same test between humans and wolves, but this did not give the same results as the test with dogs.

Have you ever wondered why dogs are so friendly to humans and are usually called man’s best friend? Everything started about 10,000 years ago. Scientists believe that wolves usually followed humans when they were hunting large and big animals such as the mammoth which is extinct. The wolves would eat the leftover scraps of the dead animal. Humans realised that they could use some help from the wolves to hunt down big animals. Later on, both humans and wolves worked together. Some time after, the interaction with humans and wolves began to change. The wolves were more loyal than they used to be and they started to depend on each other more often. That is when they started to make that bond. The changes that the wolves made changed them into what we know as dogs. According to Miho’s study, the bond was formed with some help from a hormone.