Street dogs do not necessarily become wary of people in general after being threatened, but may remember the specific person who frightened them, a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Calcutta, has found. The findings could influence how human-dog conflicts are understood and managed on city streets.
The researchers studied 54 groups of street dogs across Calcutta and Kalyani over five days before testing their response to an unfamiliar person on the sixth day. The experiment compared the effects of positive and threatening interactions between dogs and individual people.
At the beginning of the experiment, a researcher stood near each group, called the dogs and recorded how many approached. Half of the groups were then offered biscuits, while the other half were shown a stick in a manner commonly used to scare dogs away from streets. The researchers subsequently observed changes in the animals’ behaviour over five days.
Dogs exposed to the stick altered their behaviour more quickly. From the second day, they took longer to approach the experimenter, and by the fifth day fewer dogs approached. They also wagged their tails less. The dogs offered biscuits took longer to change their behaviour and began approaching the experimenter faster from the fourth day, although the overall number approaching did not increase.
The key difference emerged when an unfamiliar person repeated the test on the sixth day. Dogs that had been threatened with a stick did not show the same reluctance to approach the new person. This indicated that their wariness was directed mainly at the individual who had threatened them, rather than at people generally.
Dogs that had received biscuits, however, approached the unfamiliar person more often than they had on the first day. The result suggested that positive interaction with one individual could increase their willingness to approach other people, including strangers who may not be comfortable around dogs.
“For dogs viewing humans after such interactions, a friend of a friend is a friend, but a friend of an enemy need not be an enemy,” Anindita Bhadra, professor and canine behaviour specialist at IISER and supervisor of the study, told The Telegraph.
Bhadra said the findings highlighted the limitations of using sticks to intimidate street dogs as a way of reducing human-dog encounters. Such treatment appeared to make dogs wary of the person holding the stick, rather than of people in general. Conversely, people who feed street dogs may unintentionally make them more likely to approach others, potentially increasing the risk of conflict and bites, she said.
The researchers said the dogs’ ability to adjust their response to particular individuals while remaining willing to approach unfamiliar humans may help them live in environments where human behaviour is variable and unpredictable. The study was published on Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal.
