A recent experiment showed that the dogs were jealous of the owner when he himself observed a robot in the form of a dog, which could bark and wag its tail. This particular experiment was based on another where it showed that the children were also jealous of their parents when they took a doll to give it affection and care.
The researchers do not consider that these two cases can be compared with adult envy but it can be a precursor of the same behavior.
Studies showing that dogs can be jealous
In another previous study, dog owners were asked to do it. So when the owners paid attention and affection to another person or animal, the dogs triggered behaviors in which they requested attention, pushing the person with their body, barking, licking and the other dogs were in some way aggressive before that manifesto of attention, so due to this type of reactions people usually believe that a dog can feel jealous.
So we can say that dogs have also developed jealous behaviors just like a child.
Basically, jealousy is the ability to compare two actions between people or objects And even if we talk about the experiment mentioned above, it is possible that the dog has detected that the object to which his owner gave him affection was a robot or a toy and believed that they were crazy.
Now if an individual has the ability to feel jealousy, so may the ability to detect between the inanimate and the animate forms. Certain? As for example, when we talk about children who play ball with their parents, they show great pleasure in this activity, possibly they are the same reasons that trigger pleasure in our dogs when looking for the ball. We know that there are emotions that exist in both dogs and people, however it is evident that playing ball between father and son is very different from playing ball with a dog, but very similar feelings can be expressed.
What is the difference in being jealous between dogs and humans?
The most rational response would be conscience and although we are able to share some things with dogs, such as gestures or even the understanding of some words, there is a great bridge that separates us, such as our linguistic ability, which is what gives us the ability to communicate that is characteristic of humans only.
Have you ever noticed that when a person is jealous they tend to express jealousy through words? And that they demonstrate it without any problem? Well, if you have noticed this, it is due to the ability to express that jealousy through linguistics and expressing feelings, since we generally refer to jealousy as a physical response to a feeling of insecurity.
So when a dog has the feeling that the relationship with its grief may undergo some change, it tends to generate attitudes that reflect their dislike to the situation that is happening. Usually this happens because the dog relives negative memories similar to the situation and try to prevent them from happening again.
In conclusion, the dog does not really feel jealous, what it actually manifests is a knee-jerk reaction to feeling insecure, since he feels that the bond with his owner is being threatened.
This is how we can evaluate that animals react to different situations and when they see that their relationship is being harmed, they look for a way to attract attention and for everything to return to its normal course. And despite the fact that we already emphasized that dogs are not jealousInstead, they have a natural instinctual reaction, many believe that they are jealous, as their attitudes resemble a small child.