Journal des sciences vétérinaires et du diagnostic médical

Relevance of Ear Movements in Dog's Emotional Expressions

Antonio Meridda

In dog’s mimicry, ears movements are absolutely relevant. Dogs use them like humans using eyebrows: for a better communication. Using the DOGFACS maps,elative to the ears movement classification (EAD, Ears Action Units), we try to connect every EAD to a specific emotion. We consider just the fundamental emotion: fear, surprise, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness. Of course, dog communication is very complex, so just the ears movements are not enough to completely understand it, but, like for human eyebrows, they help very much in the comprehension. We analyzed the 6 emotions in 41 different dogs to have enough data.