Puppy Love: Do dogs really cry when they are reunited with their owners?

What is the most common way a dog expresses its happy emotions? It wags its tail, licks its owner and wiggles its body. But the next time you see your dog get teary-eyed, it might be a sign that it’s happy to see you. New research from Japan suggests that canines hold the ability to produce tears when reunited with their owners. Their tears are linked to the levels of the “bonding hormone” oxytocin. The study is based on the behaviour of 22 dogs where reactions of these dogs were recorded once they were reunited with their owners or people they knew. Let’s take a closer look at what the research says. What the research says The research, published in the journal Current Biology, says that eye contact between humans and dogs elicits emotions in the latter and encourages a dog to care for its owner. Takefumi Kikusui, one of the authors of the study told Gizmodo, “Dogs shed tears associated with positive emotions, such as a reunion with the owner.” According to The Guardian, this is the first time researchers have tied dogs’ tears to emotions. The team said, “This is the first report demonstrating that positive emotion stimulates tear secretion in a non-human animal, and that oxytocin functions in tear secretion.” Further, the study suggests that unlike any other animal, dogs have the ability to communicate with humans through eye contact. By producing tears, dogs might also be able to deepen their relationship with their owners. How was the experiment conducted? It all started when Takefumi Kikusui noticed tears in one of his dogs’ eyes when she was nurturing her puppies. “That gave me the idea that oxytocin might increase tears,” he told The Guardian. In one of the experiments conducted to prove his theory, Kikusui and his colleagues placed strips of paper under the eyes of the dogs under two conditions – once during a normal interaction with their owners and then a minute before they were reunited with them after several hours. The experiment revealed that only when the dogs met their owners after a long time they shed tears. According to CNN, Kikusui said that tear production increased by 10 per cent once the dogs were reunited with their owners than when they were with them. In another experiment, researchers tried to find out if oxytocin – a hormone linked with emotional bonding between humans and dogs – has a role to play in tear production. To test this, researchers applied a solution containing oxytocin to their eyes. They found that dropping oxytocin manually into their eyes significantly increased tear production. According to a report by BBC, dogs are known to cry to keep their tear ducts clean but before this research, it was never linked to emotions. Some scientists are wary Clive Wynne, a canine behaviour specialist at the Arizona State University is a little sceptical about the recent findings. She told _Times_that “it would take a lot to convince me” about the evidence provided by the research. He claimed that placing papers under the dogs’ eyelids might have affected the results of the experiments. “More excited dogs could have moved around more, causing the paper to rub against their eyes and produce more tears,” he said. Along similar lines, Lauren M Bylsma, a clinal psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh said that the reason why dropping oxytocin produced more tears in their eyes might be because the eyedrops irritated the dogs’ eyes. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.