ArticleScientific reports2021
Life experience rather than domestication accounts for dogs' increased oxytocin release during social contact with humans.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Invisible attitudes have visible effects on the behaviour of animals in scientific studies.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Entangled Bonds: Dyadic Dependence and Co-Regulation in Western Urban Human-Dog Relationships.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Disconnected Lives: Social Networks and Emotional Regulation in Domestic Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Behavioural manifestations of human-directed social motivation in dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Deference or sociability? Insights from dogs' and wolves' human-directed behavior in a food-conflict task.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- A Scoping Review on Salivary Oxytocin and Vasopressin Measurement in the Dog.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Oxytocin, Vasopressin and Stress: A Hormetic Perspective.Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Review
- Article
- Review
- The Power of Discourse: Associations between Trainers' Speech and the Responses of Socialized Wolves and Dogs to Training.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Similar behavioral but different endocrine responses to conspecific interactions in hand-raised wolves and dogs.iScience · 2023Article
- Biomarkers of Stress in Companion Animals.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- What are oxytocin assays measuring? Epitope mapping, metabolites, and comparisons of wildtype & knockout mouse urine.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- Fear, love, and the origins of canid domestication: An oxytocin hypothesis.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Review
- Social Stimulation by the Owner Increases Dogs' (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Bonded by nature: Humans form equally strong and reciprocated bonds with similar raised dogs and wolves.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Importance of Evaluating Positive Welfare Characteristics and Temperament in Working Therapy Dogs.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2022Review
- Article
- Neurohormonal Profiles of Assistance Dogs Compared to Pet Dogs: What Is the Impact of Different Lifestyles?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dogs' increased human-directed sociability compared to wolves may be the result of increased oxytocin system activity and decreased stress responses, but comparative studies accounting for life experience are lacking. We compared hand-raised, pack-living wolves' and dogs' behavior and hormone concentrations after interacting with a closely bonded and a familiar human. Both preferred the bonded partner, but dogs showed less variability in human-directed sociability than wolves. Physical contact was not associated with oxytocin but correlated positively with glucocorticoids in the pack-living animals when the human was not bonded. To clarify the role of life experience, we tested pet dogs and found that oxytocin concentrations correlated positively with physical contact with their owners, while glucocorticoids remained unaffected. Results show that, given similar experiences, wolf-dog differences in human-directed sociability and associated hormones are subtle and indicate that factors related to life as a pet dog rather than domestication account for oxytocin release during human-dog interactions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.