The adorable head-tilting action of dogs has a fascinating reason behind it.
Do you remember the scene in the movie Bolt where the black cat Mittens teaches Bolt how to beg for food? Mittens tells Bolt to tilt his head and look as pitiful as possible, so that others will feel sympathy.
Indeed, this endearing action makes many people “soft-hearted” in the face of their mischief (like chewing up your newly bought shoes, for instance).
Who could refuse such cuteness?
However, your furry friend isn’t just “acting” to win your affection. In fact, they do this for another reason, which relates to “vision”.
Why do dogs tilt their heads – is it just acting or is there another reason?
First, you need to understand that dogs are animals with extremely high emotional intelligence. They naturally possess the ability to understand human body language, and from that, they can infer the “signals” that humans want to convey.
Now, place a fist right in front of your nose, as shown in the picture below. Your vision is partially blocked, isn’t it?
With a fist in front of your nose, your vision is indeed limited, right?
And here is the reason! According to Professor Stanley Coren from the University of British Columbia, dogs often tilt their heads to better observe their owner’s facial expressions.
Along with the eyes, the mouth is the most important part of the face used to express emotions.
For dogs, they closely observe the lower half of our faces and “check” if we are showing… teeth or not (as this behavior is threatening to them).
Dogs tilt their heads to better observe their owner’s facial expressions.
To reach this conclusion, Coren conducted a survey with 582 participants. 62% of respondents stated that their dogs often tilt their heads to one side when they communicate or cuddle with them.
However, among flat-faced dogs like pugs or bulldogs, up to 52% do not tilt their heads. Meanwhile, 71% of long-nosed dogs (like Greyhounds or German Shepherds) frequently do this. This suggests that the head-tilting action seems to stem from vision being obstructed by their snouts.
The head-tilting action seems to stem from vision being obstructed by their snouts.
But why do nearly half of flat-faced dogs also tilt their heads? Coren explains that this may be a way for them to show their attentiveness to our speech.
“Perhaps head-tilting is related to their hearing ability, or they might just be trying to appear cute in front of their owners. Regardless, this study is a first step in the quest for answers, and at least we have some data to work with,” Coren stated in his article.
Additionally, in a recent study, scientists suggested that the head-tilting action could be a sign of concentration and recalling what has been taught.
Science has not yet thoroughly studied the reason why dogs tilt their heads – (Photo: iStock).
In fact, the team of experts stumbled upon this while studying dogs that learn very quickly. Most dogs cannot remember the names of toys, but these intelligent individuals (all belonging to the border collie breed) could remember the names of 10 different toys. One dog named Whiskey was able to correctly identify 54 out of 59 toy names taught.
Over several months, scientists compared the toy-naming abilities of this talented group of dogs with 33 other “ordinary” dogs. In the test, the owners placed the toys in a different room and asked their dogs to find the toy by name. Only 7 talented dogs could quickly remember the names of the toys, and all 7 tilted their heads before running to fetch them.
Animal behavior researcher Andrea Sommese noted that this occurrence happened too frequently to be random, prompting her to urge other scientists to delve deeper. Google search results contain many speculations from various parties, but so far, no study has truly provided a conclusive answer.
A recently published report in the journal Animal Cognition concluded: when given the command to find toys by name, talented dogs tilted their heads 43% of the time, compared to only 2% for ordinary dogs. The talented dogs frequently retrieved the correct toy regardless of whether they tilted their heads or not.
