The behaviour of overweight dogs shows similarity with personality traits of overweight humans.

Ákos Pogány,Rita Lenkei,Péter Pongrácz,Vanda Junó,Orsolya Torda,Lieta Marinelli

doi:10.1098/rsos.172398

Ákos Pogány, Rita Lenkei + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.172398

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Abstract

Excessive food intake and the resulting excess weight gain is a growing problem in human and canine populations. Dogs, due to their shared living environment with humans, may provide a beneficial model to study the causes and consequences of obesity. Here, we make use of two well-established research paradigms (two-way choice paradigm and cognitive bias test), previously applied with dogs, to investigate the role of obesity and obesity-prone breeds for food responsiveness. We found no evidence of breed differences in food responsiveness due to one breed being more prone to obesity than another. Breed differences found in this study, however, can be explained by working dog status, i.e. whether the dog works in cooperation with, or independently from, humans. Our results also confirm that overweight dogs, as opposed to normal weight dogs, tried to maximize food intake from the higher quality food and hesitated to do the task when the food reward was uncertain. These results are very similar to those expected from the parallel models that exist between certain personality traits and being overweight in humans, suggesting that dogs are indeed a promising model for experimentally investigating obesity in humans.

Highlights

IntroductionObesity and overeating represent a steadily growing problem in companion dogs
Just as in humans, obesity and overeating represent a steadily growing problem in companion dogs
The endurance analysis revealed experimental group differences (binomial generalized linear models (GLMs) of endurance, effect of experimental group: χ2(1) = 12.72, p < 0.001; figure 2), because dogs that were tested in reward alternative test conditions were more likely to complete all 20 test trials than dogs that were tested in the empty alternative conditions (b = 1.78 [0.78; 2.90], z = 3.33, p < 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Obesity and overeating represent a steadily growing problem in companion dogs. Dogs may serve as a more suitable model species than rodents for investigating the causes and consequences of obesity in humans [3,4,5]. [6,7]), we mostly lack information on the behavioural/motivational causes of overeating and obesity in dogs (but see [8]), while there is a growing body of literature about the complex relationship between human obesity and certain psychiatric/mood disorders, including depression Cognitive biases may be tested by various methods (e.g. ‘emotional Stroop test’; ‘ambiguous stimulus test’), where the core hypothesis is that an individual’s background affective state biases its decision making in a task that is not directly related to the aforementioned inner state (e.g. [12])

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