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Want your dog to love you even more? Look him in the eye

Do you wonder what happens when your sweet doggie looks at you with his cute little eyes, you melt and he throws himself on you to give you a big lick? It's love! Literally.

Canine love

Yes, because according to a study carried out by Japanese researchers and published in the American journal Science, when humans and their best friends look each other in the eye, the level of oxytocin (the hormone of love, confidence and pleasure) increases markedly in their brain! Consequence:the more men and dogs look at each other, the more they love each other. So no:if Fido looks at you with beady eyes, it's not just that he wants to eat, it's that he LOVES you.

Well, if he likes us, it's not ONLY because we are awesome... This hormonal response could in fact be born in our doggies so that they can be more easily adopted by humans. Because unlike wolves (in which scientists' tests did not work), the beginning of the domestication of man's best friend dates back approximately 30,000 years!!!). Enough to give dogs time to develop this particularity in contact with humans during the domestication process.

Females, more loving

To reach this conclusion, the researchers placed dogs in a room with their owners (30 volunteers in total, including 24 women and 6 men) and strangers, observed them for 30 minutes and then measured oxytocin in the body. urine of dogs and owners. The balance sheet? The eye contact between the two had led to a significant rise in the level of this hormone in their brains.

And decidedly, girls really attach faster, even in dogs… Because in a second experiment, the researchers applied oxytocin directly to the nostrils of certain dogs and put them in a room with their owner and d 'other people. After 30 minutes, the level of oxytocin had increased in the owners of the treated dogs and the latter, in particular the females, had responded to the hormonal treatment by looking longer at their master. Bigre.