Content
- Do dogs look like your humans?
- science explains
- they are our reflection
- Do you look like your dog?
- the human-faced dog
- Yogi, the brown-eyed Shih-poo
- Other dogs with a human face
- Pete Murray the Afghan Hound
- Humans that look like dogs
Maybe you've heard that story about dogs looking like their guardians, or you've even made this realization of your own. Well, know that this is no coincidence, science explains those dogs that look like their tutors. Some even say they are human-faced dogs. This science, which is, more specifically, a study of psychology published in 2004 by Michael M. Roy and Christenfeld Nicholas, in the journal Psychological Science, entitled ’Do Dogs Resemble Their Owners?’[1], in Portuguese: ’are dogs similar to their owners?’.
And the pictures of dogs looking like people on the internet? Have you come across any of them? We've gathered all that and more in this PeritoAnimal post: we explain if it's true that dogs look like tutors, we separate images of dogs with human faces and the story behind them!
Do dogs look like your humans?
The methodology to reach these answers consisted of going to a park in San Diego, where the University of California, the cradle of the research, is located, to separately photograph people and their dogs. The researchers then showed these randomly separated photos to a group of people and asked them to link the dogs to the people they most resembled. And isn't the result reasonably correct?
science explains
Without knowing the dogs and their guardians, people got most of the photos right. The experiment was repeated other times and the hit rate remained high. The study clarifies that this similarity is usually slight, but noticeable and in this case, the dogs photographed during the research were all purebred.
Some of those slight similarities cited included the fact that long-haired women preferred the long-eared, floppy-eared dogs, for example - or the eyes: their shape and arrangement used to be similar between dogs and their guardians. Psychologists revealed in their study that when the eyes in the photos were covered, the task of assigning a dog to a person became much more difficult.
they are our reflection
One of the possible explanations for such phenomena, published in a BBC report,[2] in fact, it clarifies that it's not the dogs that look like their guardians, but the guardians who choose to adopt those dogs that bring a sense of familiarity, especially when they look like someone we already love.
In fact, this first research and its hypotheses resulted in another study that explains in its own title: ’Not only do dogs look like their owners, but their cars too’ (Not Only Dogs Resemble Their Owners, Cars Do, Too).[3]In this case, the research says that people tend to choose cars that have some physical resemblance to their body structure.
In the case of personality, the explanation is a little different. Although some races have some more or less striking personality traits, unless the tutor has researched it beforehand, such a connection when adopting doesn't exist. A dog's character, however, can be influenced by its owner. I mean, stressed people can see this behavior reflected in their furry behavior, among other traits.
Not only that, but adopting a dog that is, in a way, our reflection can also make us try to 'mold' our pets into a better version of ourselves. Which brings us to the discussion of the humanization of animals, it is worth commenting in another post: what is its limit?
Do you look like your dog?
The photos that illustrated this post so far are the work of the British photographer Gerrard Gethings, known for his specialty in photographing animals and the project Do You Look Like Your Dog? (Do You Look Like Your Dog?) [4]. It is a series of photos produced that portray the similarity of dogs with their tutors. Check out some of them:
Similarity, coincidence or production?
In 2018 the series with 50 photos of the type went viral in a memory game format.
the human-faced dog
Okay, we know you may have come to this post looking for some pictures of dogs that look like people far beyond their own tutor, but with unusual physical characteristics where the first thing that comes to our minds is a human being. Turns and moves a meme or photo of a puppy with humanized physical characteristics is found on the internet.
Yogi, the brown-eyed Shih-poo
In 2017, the Yogi, this fellow Shi-poo in the photo (left) shook the structures of the internet by its appearance and became known as the dog with a human face. All it took was a photo of him published on the social networks of his tutor, Chantal Desjardins, for comments regarding his human appearance, especially his look, to emerge and the photo to go viral. In the photo below, Yogi is next to his older sister and this human resemblance becomes even more disparate.
There was no lack of memes comparing the animal to people:
Other dogs with a human face
The photos and memes prove that it is only a matter of time for the internet to humanize the characteristics of a puppy:
Pete Murray the Afghan Hound
In 2019, in England, this dog of the Afghan Galgo breed, full of charisma and sympathy, shone on the internet for its personable face:
Humans that look like dogs
After all, is it dogs that look like humans or humans that look like dogs? Let's remember some classic memes:
Dog with a human face? Dog-faced people?
The reflection remains. ☺🐶
If you want to read more articles similar to 15 dogs with a human face, we recommend that you enter our Curiosities section of the animal world.