ArticlePLoS computational biology2014
Leadership and path characteristics during walks are linked to dominance order and individual traits in dogs.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- High Rank, Low Tolerance: Hierarchy-Dependent Reactions of Cohabiting Companion Dogs to Being Separated from Their Owner.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Hierarchy-Dependent Behaviour of Dogs in the Strange Situation Test: High-Ranking Dogs Show Less Stress and Behave Less Friendly with a Stranger in the Presence of Their Owner.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Done deal-cohabiting dominant and subordinate dogs differently rely on familiar demonstrators in a detour task.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Rank-Related Differences in Dogs' Behaviours in Frustrating Situations.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Many faces of dominance: the manifestation of cohabiting companion dogs' rank in competitive and non-competitive scenarios.Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Fine-scale collective movements reveal present, past and future dynamics of a multilevel society in Przewalski's horses.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Behavioural synchronization and social referencing of dogs and humans: walking in dyad vs in group.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Inferring social influence in animal groups across multiple timescales.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- A comparison of personality traits of gifted word learner and typical border collies.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- The Youngest, the Heaviest and/or the Darkest? Selection Potentialities and Determinants of Leadership in Canarian Dromedary Camels.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
- The Indispensable Dog.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Assertive, trainable and older dogs are perceived as more dominant in multi-dog households.PloS one · 2020Article
- Cross-Sectional Age Differences in Canine Personality Traits; Influence of Breed, Sex, Previous Trauma, and Dog Obedience Tasks.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2019Article
- Dominance in dogs as rated by owners corresponds to ethologically valid markers of dominance.PeerJ · 2019Article
- Behavioral synchronization and affiliation: Dogs exhibit human-like skills.Learning & behavior · 2018Article
- Inferring influence and leadership in moving animal groups.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Challenges and solutions for studying collective animal behaviour in the wild.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- The Mental Homologies of Mammals. Towards an Understanding of Another Mammals World View.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2017Article
- Interspecific behavioural synchronization: dogs exhibit locomotor synchrony with humans.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Discrete modes of social information processing predict individual behavior of fish in a group.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Movement interactions and the underlying social structure in groups have relevance across many social-living species. Collective motion of groups could be based on an "egalitarian" decision system, but in practice it is often influenced by underlying social network structures and by individual characteristics. We investigated whether dominance rank and personality traits are linked to leader and follower roles during joint motion of family dogs. We obtained high-resolution spatio-temporal GPS trajectory data (823,148 data points) from six dogs belonging to the same household and their owner during 14 30-40 min unleashed walks. We identified several features of the dogs' paths (e.g., running speed or distance from the owner) which are characteristic of a given dog. A directional correlation analysis quantifies interactions between pairs of dogs that run loops jointly. We found that dogs play the role of the leader about 50-85% of the time, i.e. the leader and follower roles in a given pair are dynamically interchangable. However, on a longer timescale tendencies to lead differ consistently. The network constructed from these loose leader-follower relations is hierarchical, and the dogs' positions in the network correlates with the age, dominance rank, trainability, controllability, and aggression measures derived from personality questionnaires. We demonstrated the possibility of determining dominance rank and personality traits of an individual based only on its logged movement data. The collective motion of dogs is influenced by underlying social network structures and by characteristics such as personality differences. Our findings could pave the way for automated animal personality and human social interaction measurements.
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