THE TAIL WAG TELLS ALL

A dog’s tail wagging sends two distinctly different messages, a new study has found. Italian researchers say that the direction of the wagging is an automatic response triggered by activity in the brain’s two hemispheres, offering evidence that dogs, like humans, have asymmetrically organized brains. The study builds on work by the same team that found dogs wagged their tails to their right when seeing something positive, like their owners, and to their left upon encountering threats, like an unfriendly dog.  (click below to read more)
This time, 43 dogs of various breeds were outfitted with vests that monitored their heart rate and then shown videos of other dogs in which the only moving object was the tail. The dogs that watched a left-wagging tail became anxious and experienced an accelerated heart rate, while the ones that viewed a rightward wag stayed calm and even began to approach the dog onscreen. University of Trento neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara tellsNPR.org that veterinarians, pet owners, and even mail carriers may profit from knowing when a dog is feeling friendly, and when approaching one may “evoke a more aggressive response.”