Why Do Dogs Evolve More Complex Emotions

Dogs are able to connect not only mentally with humans, but also emotionally. Through observations dogs are able to understand different types of emotions and how and when they can progress. Depending on the age or the personal experience of the dog, their knowledge of human emotions may be slim in comparison to others. A study had shown that the average dog usually has a brain developed at the stage of a 2 ½ year old, which explains why dogs are unable to evolve more complex emotions (Knapton, Sarah). The comparison of the brain was intriguing to me because of how they were able to compare the development of the brain, to the ability of the portrayal of certain emotions. The direct relationship between the two allowed for me to recognize
the great impact one had on the other. One important factor that enables our dog to understand the words we speak is through practice. By training a dog’s brain, we are able to control their learning experience into the way we would like the dog to behave. For example, if we want our dog to stop barking we have to show authority in our voices and a hardness in our tone. According to Tia Ghose’s article, Do Dogs Understand words or Emotions, in the trial, the researchers played a video of the owners saying the words "Come on, then!" but with the emotion edited out of their voice, and with the sound changed so the voice itself could no longer be recognized. But other times, the dogs heard the owners say the same phrase, but with words jumbled so they could not be understood. This stressed the intonation and emotional content of the speech.
Think to yourself about how you know when a conversation may be going in a slightly different direction than you pictured.
Is this because of the body language they presented? Or how they expressed particular words to you? A common theme between the comprehension a human has to a dog is quite similar. Based upon these context clues dogs are able to make an inference on how you may be feeling based on the tone or inflections you make within your voice. According to Julie Hecht, a contemporary American fiction writer,“Dogs derive an enormous amount of information from contextual cues, particularly our body movements as well as tone and “prosody”— the rhythm, stress and intonation of our speech. When people talk to dogs, dogs pay attention to the melody and the mood to predict what is happening or what will happen next” (Hecht, Julie). As you can see from this profound author, the ability for a dog's comprehension of the words do not just rely on understanding the word itself. Most of the time, as previously mentioned, dogs are able to infer on what we are saying based on the inflections and tone in our voice. Not only do they pick up on the tone in our voice but also the way we move and go about when moody. The capability of a dog’s senses is extreme due to their intellect and how differently they go about
life.