Your dog cries each time it is reunited with you, but you might not see it

Japanese researchers found that dogs cry when they reunite with their owners. What’s more, the tears seem to be linked to levels of the ‘bonding hormone' oxytocin. Watch your pooch’s eyes carefully next time you're back from work or grocery shopping.

Dogs do cry

According to the research team, this is the first report that shows positive emotion stimulating tear shedding in animals.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, Japanese scientists describe how eye contact between you and your pooch makes you release oxytocin and want to take care of them more. They also tell about dogs’ evolutionary ability to raise their inner eyebrows, another trait that scientists say induces humans to nurture the pooches.

Now researchers have found that tears might have a similar effect.

Professor Takefumi Kikusui, a co-author of the research at Azabu University, told The Guardian that he noticed that one of his poodles had a more tender than usual face and teary eyes when nursing her puppies, which gave him the idea that oxytocin might increase tears.

The reunion experiment

The team measured the volume of tears produced by 18 dogs when they were at home with their owner with what was shed within the first five minutes of reunion after at least five-hour separations. There were a lot more tears in the second scenario!

Interestingly, this increase was not there, when 20 dogs were reunited with a familiar human that was not their owner. This shows how much your pooch feels for you.

Your dog’s teary eyes make you more emotional toward them

The team presented 74 participants with 10 photos of five dogs with or without moist eyes. People were asked to rate on a five-point scale how much they wanted to avoid or care for the animal.The teary-eyed pets gained 10 to 15% more affection!

Unlike other animals, dogs are good at communicating with humans with their eyes, and their tears might play a role in making us more emotional. They may also help deepen the bonding between us and our four-legged friends.

It is not yet clear if dogs show an increase in tears during a dog-dog reunion or use tears to communicate with each other. More experiments will be necessary to establish that.

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