You know that face your
dog makes, the one that’s a little bit quizzical, maybe a bit sad, a bit anticipatory, with the eyebrows slanted? Sometimes you think it says, “Don’t be sad. I can help.” Other times it quite clearly asks, “No salami for me?”
Scientists have not yet been able to translate the look, but they have given it a label: “AU101: inner eyebrow raise.” And a team of evolutionary psychologists and anatomists reported that dogs make this face more often and way more intensely than wolves. In fact dogs, but not wolves, have a specific muscle that helps raise those brows.
There were studies on how dogs look to their owners when they can’t solve a problem, and evidence that dogs who indulged more in “AU101: inner eyebrow raise” were more likely to get adopted. So the team tested dog and wolf behaviour by videotaping their reactions, and, as expected, dogs did raise their eyebrows more often and more intensely than wolves.
Researchers dissected the heads of four wolves and six dogs, all of which they acquired after deaths. All the musculature was exactly alike except for the levator muscle, which none of the wolves had.
Scientists think humans have unconsciously favoured eyebrow-raising dogs during recent
selective breeding. One tantalising hint that could lead to future study was that one of the dogs, a
Siberian husky, was more like the wolves. Huskies are more closely related to wolves than some breeds, and it could also be that talent in sled-pulling was more important than a soulful face in its development.