Abstract
Aggressive behavior in dogs poses public health and animal welfare concerns, however the biological mechanisms regulating dog aggression are not well understood. We investigated the relationships between endogenous plasma oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP)—neuropeptides that have been linked to affiliative and aggressive behavior in other mammalian species—and aggression in domestic dogs. We first validated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for the measurement of free (unbound) and total (free + bound) OT and AVP in dog plasma. In Experiment 1 we evaluated behavioral and neuroendocrine differences between a population of pet dogs with a history of chronic aggression toward conspecifics and a matched control group. Dogs with a history of aggression exhibited more aggressive behavior during simulated encounters with conspecifics, and had lower free, but higher total plasma AVP than matched controls, but there were no group differences for OT. In Experiment 2 we compared OT and AVP concentrations between pet dogs and a population of assistance dogs that have been bred for affiliative and non-aggressive temperaments, and investigated neuroendocrine predictors of individual differences in social behavior within the assistance dog population. Compared to pet dogs, assistance dogs had higher free and total OT, but there were no differences in either measure for AVP. Within the assistance dog population, dogs who behaved more aggressively toward a threatening stranger had higher total AVP than dogs who did not. Collectively these data suggest that endogenous OT and AVP may play critical roles in shaping dog social behavior, including aspects of both affiliation and aggression.
Highlights
Aggressive behavior in dogs is a serious concern for reasons related to both public health and animal welfare
We have recently shown that a reduction/alkylation and protein precipitation (R/A PPT) procedure—which liberates bound OT from plasma proteins—allows for the detection of much higher concentrations of OT, and have validated this approach with dog plasma analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) (Brandtzaeg et al, 2016)
Because similar behavioral differences were not observed when subjects were presented with control stimuli, this suggests that aggressive responses were both specific and social in nature, and presumably triggered by the verisimilitude of the models
Summary
Aggressive behavior in dogs is a serious concern for reasons related to both public health and animal welfare. In the United States it is estimated that dogs bite ∼4.5 million Americans annually, with approximately half of these bites directed toward children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003; Gilchrist et al, 2008) In addition to this impact on human lives, aggression (toward humans or other dogs) is one of the most common reasons that dogs are relinquished to animal shelters (Salman et al, 1998), with ∼2 million of these dogs being euthanized every year (Patronek et al, 1996). Despite these widely recognized concerns, we know relatively little about the psychological and biological factors underlying dog aggression. The biological mechanisms which facilitate aggressive behavior are diverse, and different forms of aggression may be mediated by different neurobiological substrates (Panksepp and Zellner, 2004)
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