Seeing left- or right-asymmetric tail wagging produces different emotional responses in dogs.

Left-right asymmetries in behavior associated with asymmetries in the brain are widespread in the animal kingdom, and the hypothesis has been put forward that they may be linked to animals' social behavior. Dogs show asymmetric tail-wagging responses to different emotive stimuli-the outcome of different activation of left and right brain structures controlling tail movements to the right and left side of the body. A crucial question, however, is whether or not dogs detect this asymmetry.

Are temporal features crucial acoustic cues in dog vocal recognition?

To investigate the perceptual mechanisms underlying conspecific vocal recognition in canine species, eighteen dogs were presented with playbacks of normal and reversed versions of typical dog vocalizations. Auditory perception was analysed using the head-turn paradigm, a non-invasive technique extensively employed to study hemispheric specializations for processing conspecific vocalizations in primates. The results revealed that dogs usually turn their heads with the right ear leading (left hemisphere activation) in response to the forward version of their typical calls, and with either no bias and the left ear leading (right hemisphere activation) in response to the reversed call versions.