Dogs are able to detect stress, anxiety in humans: Study

Digital Desk: In a study conducted by Queen’s University, Belfast, researchers found that dogs can smell anxiety in humans through their sweat and breath.

PhD researchers Clara Wilson and Kerry Campbell (MSc student) from the school of psychology carried out the study, and the findings have been published in PLOS ONE. in the school of psychology. They were supervised by Catherine Reeve, with support on collecting the human physiological measures from Zachary Petzel.

36 people and four dogs from Belfast, Treo, Fingal, Soot, and Winne were taken for the study samples Sweat and breath from participants were collected before and after they did a difficult math problem, after which the participants self-reported their stress levels. Samples were taken from the area where the person's blood pressure and heart rate had increased.  

In every test session, each dog was given one person's relaxed and stressed samples, taken only four minutes apart. All of the dogs were able to correctly alert the researchers to each person’s stress sample.

Clara Wilson says, "The findings show that we, as humans, produce different smells through our sweat and breath when we are stressed, and dogs can tell this apart from our smell when relaxed—even if it is someone they do not know."

This is the first study of its kind, and it provides evidence that dogs do not need visual or audio cues to pick up on human stress.