Humans can't resist puppy eyes, so much so that we have impacted their eye colour
Dogs eyes
We know that dogs have evolved particular facial muscles to appear more cute to humans, but have we unknowingly affected our canine friends' eyes? Apparently, yes.
New research suggests that ever since humans domesticated canines some 15,000 to 50,000 years ago, we have selected particular traits in dogs...eye colour included.
Impacting evolution: The human way
Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers from Japan say that humans seem to have a penchant for puppy eyes, especially dark ones.
They found that among domesticated dogs, dark eyes are more common than their wild relatives. It was also observed that humans perceive dogs with a darker eye colour as more friendly and, thus, more desirable.
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Akitsugu Konno, the first author of the research, as quoted by The Guardian, said: "I speculate that lighter irises have some evolutionary advantage for wolves, but domestication has lost this selective pressure and darker eyes have emerged in some primitive dogs."
They believe that darker eyes may have been favoured by humans — consciously or unconsciously, during the domestication of canines from wolves to dogs.
"We speculate that a darker iris makes it more difficult to distinguish the size of the pupil and thus gives the illusion of a large pupil, which is associated with our perception of being more infant-like," adds Konno, from Teikyo University of Science.
A comparison of the iris colour of 22 images of grey wolves from different locations, with 81 images of domestic dogs, revealed that the domesticated canines had darker, reddish eyes.
Light colour or dark, which is cuter?
To give weight to their theory, the researchers conducted an experiment, where they created 12 pairs of images. Each pair showed a domestic dog with light eyes, and the same dog with dark eyes.
A selection of these pictures was shown to two groups of 76 and 66 people. The humans were asked to rate the dogs for various personality traits. They were also asked to rate how much they would like to interact with a dog or keep it.
Results showed that dogs with darker eyes earned higher ratings. A higher number of people deemed them more easy-going, sociable and dependent, and less aggressive, intelligent and mature than their light-eyed counterparts.
"Overall, dogs with dark eyes may have evolved the trait largely as means to send non-threatening gaze signal to humans," said the researchers.
They found that eye colour was not directly related to the participant's desire to interact with or keep a dog. However, they speculate that the association of dark eyes with immaturity could be an influencing factor behind a human's desire to protect and care for a dog.
(With inputs from agencies)
