JEALOUS DOGS
Science seems to confirm what dog owners have always known. Read this article and answer the questions. Remember:
- You can listen to the text by pressing the ‘PLAY’ button at the end.
- Check the meaning or pronunciation by double-clicking any individual word .
- Use the Google translator at the top of the page to translate the whole text.
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To legions of dog-owners, the finding will come as no surprise: it does not take much to make a dog feel jealous.
Researchers in the US studied 36 dogs and found that most were indifferent when their owners ignored them and read aloud from a children’s pop-up book. But when the owners showered their attention on a stuffed dog – or even played with a bucket with a face painted on the side – the dogs’ behaviour changed dramatically.
Video footage showed that when owners petted the stuffed toy, which barked and wagged its tail for effect, their dogs growled more and sometimes snapped and forced their way between the toy and their owner. A quarter of the dogs snapped at the stuffed animal, while only one snapped at the book and the bucket.
Christine Harris, who led the study at the University of California in San Diego, said the dogs’ reactions might betray a simple form of jealousy that arises from lack of attention and affection being poured on a rival. The dogs touched the stuffed toy, or tried to get between it and their owner, twice as often as they did with the bucket, and far more than with the book.
“It was striking how much more they tried to do things like get between the owner and the stuffed object,” Harris said. “Jealousy was very rare with the other two things.” The study is published in the journal Plos One.
The research involved 14 breeds of dogs, including daschunds, chihuahuas, pomeranians and Yorkshire terriers, with the rest being mixed breeds. As a precaution, Harris only used small dogs in case they got overly aggressive and had to be subdued.
Harris said that while anecdotal accounts tell of dogs being jealous of partners, cats and babies, the animals’ jealousy is thought to be primordial and similar to that seen in babies. Her study was inspired by previous work that suggested six-month-old babies got jealous when their mothers paid attention to a life-like doll, but not when they read a book.
In her study, Harris ran two tests simultaneously. The first looked at jealous behaviour in the dogs, like growling, snapping, and getting between and pushing the owner and object. The second measured the amount of attention the dogs were giving the object and owner.
Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trento said: “It is an interesting study that provides some empirical support to the idea, quite widespread among dog owners, that these animals possess some sort of equivalent of jealousy behaviour.” If the underlying mechanism is ancient as the authors suppose, it could be sparked by anything that seems to be living, he added.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
QUESTIONS:
Mark ‘true’ (T) or ‘false/not mentioned’ (F) and write the line that demonstrates your answer (where possible):
1. Dogs recognise the difference between a real and a stuffed dog.
2. Dog are not half as jealous when their owners read a book as when he pays attention to a dog-like object.’
3. The experiment was deemed too dangerous to use with bigger breeds.
4. There is a fundamental difference between the jealousy shown in babies and in dogs.
5. Dogs could also become jealous of budgies and turtles, or even other people.
FIND A WORD OR PHRASE WHICH MEANS:
Give (in large quantities) to….(two words):
6.
7.
Caused by/Triggered by:
8.
Agressive reactions of an angry dog (two words):
forced on
9.
10.
Another typical noise made by a dog, whether angry or not:
11.
A way of paying attention to your dog, stroking it with your hand:
12:
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IDEA FOR WRITING:
A friend sends you an email. He is thinking of getting a pet for his aunt, who is getting old, lives alone in an apartment, and needs company. Advise him on which pet would be the best option. Here are some ideas:
Yorkshire Terrier
Dalmatian
Siamese Cat
Australian Budgie
Spanish Canary
Turtle
3 or 4 Hamsters
A Rabbit.
A Python
(You don’t have to mention them all!)
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