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Oxytocin promotes social bonding in dogs (Romero et al., 2014), My…
Oxytocin promotes social bonding in dogs (Romero et al., 2014)
Background/questions
Oxytocin (OT) promotes social bonding in monogamous mammals. These social bonds also increase fitness.
What about outside of reproduction?
Sociability decreases predation risk and promotes food security. This success depends on the quality of sociability which suggests that it is an adaptive trait.
What is the neurochemistry behind this?
Is the neurochemistry for sociability the same as for maternal care?
Methods
Rationale
Dogs form social bonds with other dogs and humans, making them a good model to see whether their sociability increases when given oxytocin. If sociability increases, oxytocin probably regulates these behaviors.
Metrics
affiliation, approach, time spent in proximity
Materials
Dogs randomly administered intrranasal oxytocin vs placebo
Experimentation
Dog owners instructed not to initiate interaction with the dogs. Therefore any interaction initiated by the dog should be due to OT.
Results
OT group initiated affiliation more often than placebo group
time spent with human was not affected
OT group's social orientation changed (more eye contact/head oriented toward owner)
social approach increased in experiment group
Discussion
OT promotes sociability and the desire to affiliate. Since sociability is adaptive, natural selection promotes the neurochemistry that maintains sociability.
Oxytocin is the mediator of social relationships and interspecific bonding.
The same neurochemistry that modulates interspecific relationships also modulates associative cooperation.
My questions
Study was done with dogs familiar with their owners. What about with dogs who were unfamiliar with the human?
Dogs already show a propensity for sociability. Would this experiment in a less social animal better show causality?
What was the concentration of OT? Could giving too much predispose the animal to show sociability when it normally would not?
Authors describe blood collection during experimentation as disturbing the subjects, but they could also insert an intravenous catheter so that blood could be more easily collected painlessly during experimentation.
References
Romero, T., Nagasawa, M., Mogi, K., Hasegawa, T., & Kikusui, T. (2014). Oxytocin promotes social bonding in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(25), 9085–9090.