A dog's life: study reveals people's hormonal link with tail-waggers [View all]
Source: REUTERS
(Reuters) - Dogs are called "man's best friend" - women's, too - and scientists say the bond between people and their pooches may be deeper than you might think.
Researchers in Japan said on Thursday oxytocin, a hormone that among other things helps reinforce bonds between parents and their babies, increases in humans and their dogs when they interact, particularly when looking into one another's eyes.
They described a series of experiments that suggest that people and their canine companions have mutually developed this instinctual bonding mechanism in the thousands of years since dogs were first domesticated.
Sometimes called the "love hormone," oxytocin is made in a brain structure called the hypothalamus and secreted from the pituitary gland. It is involved in emotional bonding, maternal behavior, child birth, breast-feeding, sexual arousal and other functions.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/16/us-science-dogs-idUSKBN0N728Z20150416
= new reply since forum marked as read