Weak Knees: Harsh Words Throw Dogs Off Balance

How do angry or cheerful human voices affect the balance of dogs? This question was not about emotional stability but rather whether the posture of the four-legged animals changes. And indeed, tone makes the music, as a research team from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna has now discovered: Angry human voices cause dogs to have "weak knees," while cheerful voices can have the opposite effect. Human voices never leave dogs indifferent – this is another finding of the exploratory study that has now been published.

Foto: Thomas Suchanek/Vetmeduni

The dogs participating in the study experienced both stabilization and destabilization of their balance when exposed to angry or cheerful human voices. However, angry voices were associated with the most significant destabilizing effects, as Nadja Affenzeller and her colleagues from the Clinical Centre for Small Animal Health and Research at Vetmeduni demonstrated.

Measuring Balance Changes

The researchers measured changes in the balance of 23 household dogs after they listened to audio recordings of cheerful and angry human voices. They used a standard research technique in which the dogs stood on a pressure-sensitive platform that recorded small movements based on five parameters related to balance.

Destabilized by Angry Voices

"Compared to complete silence, hearing an angry human voice was associated with higher values of a parameter we call the area of the center of pressure," explained study lead author Nadja Affenzeller. Simply put, this parameter describes the support area the body needs to keep its center of gravity stable. Higher values indicate destabilization, as larger body movements are required to maintain balance.

Four Other Parameters Without Clear Results

"However, we could not consistently associate any of the other four stabilization parameters with angry or cheerful voices," Affenzeller added. This changed when individual reactions of the dogs were considered, as these varied significantly between the animals. Cheerful voices were associated with destabilization in 57% of the dogs and stabilization in 43% – across all five parameters studied. Angry voices, on the other hand, were linked to the strongest destabilization in 30% of the dogs, while 70% showed no changes in balance.

Good & Bad: Human Voices Trigger Emotional Arousal in Dogs

The researchers concluded that "angry and cheerful human voices elicit emotional arousal, which can both stabilize and destabilize balance." Further studies are now needed, for example, to investigate whether previous experiences with humans influence individual dogs' reactions and whether balance stabilization in response to cheerful voices is linked to an anticipatory expectation of positive interaction – such as playing with their human partner.

The article „Effects of happy and angry human voice recordings on postural stability in dogs: An exploratory biomechanical analysis“ by Nadja Affenzeller, Masoud Aghapour, Christiane Lutonsky, Christian Peham and Barbara Bockstahler was published in „PLOS One“.

Scientific article

Scientific contact:
Dr. med. vet. Nadja Affenzeller Dip ECAWBM (BM) MSc FTA MRCVS
Klinisches Zentrum für Kleintiere
Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien (Vetmeduni)
nadja.affenzeller@vetmeduni.ac.at

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