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By Jennifer Earl
/ CBS News
When a dog showers you with kisses, it’s often to show you affection — but there’s also a reason that’s rooted in their evolutionary history.
To better understand the reasoning behind a dog’s licks, Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, a dog cognition researcher and bestselling author of “The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves,” told “CBS Mornings Plus” on Thursday that we should look at their ancestors.
Dogs are descended from wolves and when wolves hunt and return to their pack, then all of the other wolves swarm them and lick around their face.
“The reason they do that is they’re asking the wolf to regurgitate a little bit of what they just hunted,” Horowitz explained. “So, your dog’s lick of you when you come home is absolutely a greeting — you know, they’re happy to see you. But also, it’s a little bit of a request for whatever you just ate.”
They’re also using a lick to get information about the world.
“They’re smelling you by licking you,” Horowitz added.
Dog owners often believe they can understand their pets, identifying whether their dog is barking to go on a walk, begging for food or trying to find their trapped tennis ball.
“On some level, they are communicating with us. We’re not always good at interpreting what they’re saying,” said Horowitz.
For example, you can easily tell when a dog has a “guilty look,” putting their ears back or whimpering. But the reason behind this may not be what you think.
“It turns out that [guilty look] is actually just a response to us and our thinking that they’ve done something wrong. It’s a submissive or appeasing behavior that they put on that’s super cute and it’s a request to not be punished. And it usually works,” Horowitz said.
We can also interpret our dog’s feelings by looking at their tails.
“It’s more than just happiness,” Horowitz said.
A low tail wag between the legs can represent anxiety, concern or nervousness. A real high tail wag, like a flag, can represent something a dog is interested in.
While dogs are really good at fitting into the human world, they experience the world differently than us.
“The way we see the world — dogs smell it… They’re living in a kind of parallel universe to us,” Horowitz. “We should let them sniff things. We should appreciate that that’s how they’re seeing the world.”
Jennifer Earl is the Vice President of Growth & Engagement at CBS News and Stations. Jennifer has previously written for outlets including The Daily Herald, The Gazette, NBC News, Newsday, Fox News and more.
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