The character of Puss in Boots, with his enormous eyes, is undoubtedly one of the cutest in animation history. Now, scientists have borrowed his name to describe an unusual phenomenon. It turns out that dogs with big eyes are perceived by women as “adorable,” almost childlike, prompting them to speak to these animals in a “baby talk” style. In turn, dogs are more receptive to this type of female communication.
The “Adorableness” of Dogs with Big Eyes
Researchers found that women, unlike men, tend to use a higher pitch when talking to dogs with large eyes. The team dubbed this the “Puss in Boots effect,” which reveals key differences in how men and women perceive “adorableness.” Previous studies have shown that when communicating with infants and dogs, people are inclined to speak in a higher tone to capture their attention. However, it remains unclear how this speech varies among different dog breeds.
For this study, the team enlisted 21 men and 24 women, asking them to interact with photographs of dogs from 12 different breeds. The images were manipulated so that the eyes of each dog were either 15% smaller or 15% or 30% larger than normal. Over 400 people were also surveyed online to assess the gender, age, and “adorableness” of the images. The results indicated that women, unlike men, spoke to dogs with larger eyes using a higher pitch.
The Limits of the “Puss in Boots Effect”
Women also rated dogs with big eyes as younger than those with smaller eyes. While the reason for this effect remains unclear, researchers believe it relates to the phenomenon of neoteny, where animals with larger eyes are perceived as significantly younger. One of the study’s authors, Dr. Holly Ruth-Gatteridge, told the Daily Mail that the findings demonstrate a new fact: men and women respond differently to “adorableness,” even at an unconscious level.
Men are less responsive to changes in eye size than women. The study also confirms that people are more attuned to the perception of youth in animals. However, researchers discovered that the Puss in Boots effect has its limits. Co-author Gemma Forman noted that when a dog’s eye size becomes excessively large and appears unnatural, the “Uncanny Valley” effect occurs, making dogs seem less pleasant and more unsettling. Consequently, women speak in a less exaggerated tone to dogs with overly large, striking eyes. This effect is particularly evident in breeds like pugs or Pomeranians, which already have relatively large eyes for their head size.
Dogs Prefer Female “Baby Talk”
Another study revealed that dogs are more sensitive to high-pitched female tones. Brain scan analyses conducted by researchers show that these pets actually listen to our conversations with them, much like human infants do. Infants are known to be extremely responsive to a high, sing-song tone known as “infant-directed speech,” which researchers argue aids in better brain development. However, infants are exposed to this influence even in the womb, while dogs do not share this connection with women.
The study involved 19 dogs from eight different breeds, aged between 2 and 10 years. Researchers scanned each dog’s brain using an fMRI machine while playing three different types of recorded speech from both men and women directed at dogs, infants, and adults. The dogs’ brains showed greater activity when listening to “baby talk,” typically used for infants and pets. The animals were particularly sensitive to this when the speaker was female.
Why Are Dogs Sensitive to “Baby Talk”?
Scientists found that during the brain scans, the same areas of the dogs’ brains were activated as in infants when they listened to “baby talk.” Researchers propose two theories on how this human trait may have developed in animals. They suggest that either mammals have long had a universal sensitivity to high-pitched sounds, or this trait was acquired during the domestication of dogs.
Neuroethologist Anna Gabor and her colleagues explain that it is quite possible that the first dogs with a greater sensitivity to “baby talk” stayed close to humans and became domesticated by paying attention to their vocal signals. Some experimental data indicate that wolves respond better to soft speech, while dogs are more attuned to higher tones. Gabor’s team was able to include only 19 dogs in their study, and they did not control for the gender of the pet owners, which could have influenced the type of speech to which the dogs were most sensitive. Therefore, researchers note that further studies are needed, as the similarities they found between how dogs and human infants respond to adult voices warrant deeper exploration. Perhaps pets can help us understand what humans were like before they began to speak.