Stare into my eyes

February 21, 2008 3:44 PM

Why do animals make eye contact with humans?

Dogs and cats always maintain prolonged eye contact with me. How do some animals know that eye contact establishes a special connection with a human? Why don't they stare at any other part of my body?

posted by oldlies to grab bag (27 comments total)

Domestic animals have learned over the centuries how to interact with humans.
posted by fire&wings at 3:49 PM on February 21

Also, eye contact between animals is a significant aspect of communication as well.
posted by gnutron at 3:53 PM on February 21

I've always wondered about that. It seems to me like it would be some sort of 'proof' of animal conscience and self awareness, that they know they themselves have eyes and that we have eyes.

And I would really doubt it is just domestic cats and dogs.
posted by Corduroy at 3:56 PM on February 21

I've always understood that its a way to determine dominance. Averting eye contact signifies subordination.
posted by tdischino at 3:59 PM on February 21 [2 favorites]

Eye contact with humans is eye contact with animals.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:01 PM on February 21 [9 favorites]

Eye contact = dominance. This is why you should never make eye contact with lions, tigers or bears (oh my).

I ALWAYS win staredown contests with my cats, though.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:06 PM on February 21

To try to figure out if we're going to attack it or not. Why do you look someone in the eyes when you're squaring up for some fisticuffs with them?

Dogs will look other dogs in the eye in a fight and I've seen seagulls and crows going at it and they look each others in the eye to size each other up, trying to get the best advantage.
posted by porpoise at 4:07 PM on February 21

Eye contact with humans is eye contact with animals.

Exactly. A better way of asking this question would be "Why is eye contact a meaningful behavior for predatory mammals?" Just go to a dog park and see how important eye contact is in dog behavior.
posted by LionIndex at 4:13 PM on February 21

Also, for higher animals, you can see why it would be useful to know where your predators or prey are looking -- it tells you something about where they'll go next, and whether they see you. So it's not surprising that animals in general would have a heightened awareness of the eyes of other animals

But whatever their "natural" endowments were before humans stepped in, domestic animals have definitely been bred for traits like this.
Maybe not as a conscious intention of the breeders (not "I want a dog that makes eye contact") but as an unconscious reliance on human-like social cues ("I want a dog that listens").
posted by LobsterMitten at 4:16 PM on February 21

Eye contact is not always for dominance. It is a very distinct form of signaling though, as it fairly incontrovertibly says "I see you, you see me, and we each know that the other sees us."
Example: some prey animals will use eye contact (along with distinctive patterns in their ears which allow for easy recognition by others of the spot they are looking at) with stalking predators to signal "I know you're there. It'll just be a waste of both of our time if you chase me. Bugger off."
posted by agentofselection at 4:17 PM on February 21

This is why you should never make eye contact with lions, tigers or bears

That is not really true, not to mention that the animals you lump together have completely different social structures. Personally if I run into a bear I like to keep as close an eye on it as possible and the easiest way to read its expression is to look at it's "face". Ears are really expressive, humans got short-changed there!

My dog makes eye contact with me when she wants something, not as an expression of dominance. Cats do that too.
posted by fshgrl at 4:18 PM on February 21

It is theorized by some that there is a brain mechanism which animals and humans use to determine what another being is going to do. Simon Baron-Cohen called it the Eye Direction Detector.

Note that many creatures have "eye spots" which are a form of camoflage designed to make it difficult to determine what they are going to do next.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:20 PM on February 21

Hit post too soon...

Also my dog will let me know if she wants me to look at something by staring at it and giving me little sidelong glances. Similarly she watches my face to see what I'm looking at.

One thing I've noticed at dog parks is that most dog identify their owners by looking at their faces and not by smell or their shoes or anything, which you might expect. If you see a dog lost in a crowd of people it will go around and look at everyone's face to find its owner. I've explained to my dog that this is inefficent but she won't listen.
posted by fshgrl at 4:21 PM on February 21

It seems to me like it would be some sort of 'proof' of animal conscience and self awareness

Why would you imagine they don't?

How do some animals know that eye contact establishes a special connection with a human?

I think you're making too much of this by calling it a special connection. This is called anthropomorphization -- the placement of human concepts, heavily influenced by social and linguistic factors, onto animals. Try to look at what the animal is actually doing. It does have a brain, it just doesn't have (very much) language. It can certainly communicate anything from pain to distaste to affection. It can certainly be interested in something, and pleased by interaction with another conscious being, especially one that feeds and pets it. It knows, by instinct and experience if not any other way, that when you are not interested in it you are looking in another direction. On a strictly behavioral level, it probably knows that being looked at is a precursor to getting a treat or a cuddle or a toy. Why would it look at your leg? It knows your leg can't see it, especially if you've stepped on it before.
posted by dhartung at 4:28 PM on February 21

Why would you imagine they don't?

I do believe animals are self aware, but some people don't. So I've brought up eye contact in why I think they might have self awareness, not that I actually know anything substantial on the topic. Just my own observation.
posted by Corduroy at 4:35 PM on February 21

I'll suggest a reason, purely speculative.

Animals rely on emotions, not reason. In some aspects, they do not think, they feel. Far more than we do. Whether the sense of sight is their primary sense or not, domesticated animals have learned that it is our primary sense, and our emotions are expressed visually. Oh sure they know that they're in trouble if we yell at them - heck thats what they do (growls, yelps, yowls etc.) - but they dont have a language, not like we do anyway. They rely on emotional signals. That's probably primarily a mix of visual, vocal and olfactory for them, but we dont really have olfactory signals (no pheromones to speak of and what we have we wash off every day with scented soaps), so its all either vocal or visual.

So its either "Bad dog!" or what they can perceive visually. And our eyes become literally the windows to our souls to them. They see love, safety, fear, hatred, disdain, command, etc and they respond as their little hearts dictate. They look in our eyes because thats the best way they can understand us and domesticated animals really really want to know where they stand with their keepers.
posted by elendil71 at 4:36 PM on February 21

"I think they are looking at our eyes and where our eyes are looking, and what our eyes look like," the ethologist Patricia McConnell, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says. "A rounded eye with a dilated pupil is a sign of high arousal and aggression in a dog. I believe they pay a tremendous amount of attention to how relaxed our face is and how relaxed our facial muscles are, because that's a big cue for them with each other. Is the jaw relaxed? Is the mouth slightly open? And then the arms. They pay a tremendous amount of attention to where our arms go."

From this article about The Dog Whisperer by Malcolm Gladwell.
posted by euphorb at 4:36 PM on February 21

I saw an experiment on TV involving wolves and dogs. The wolves were domesticated as young cubs and brought up alongside with dogs. They taught the dogs to look for visual cues "pointing with a finger" and facial cues "glancing with just their eyes." There were two covered bowls, one was empty and the other one held a treat. Initially the handler pointed or glanced at the bowl with the treat. The dog would proceed toward that bowl and was rewarded with the treat. Then they had the handler point or glance at the empty bowl. The dog went to the bowl the handler pointed or glanced at. They tried the same experiment with the wolf and found that the wolf never payed attention to the handler's visual or facial cues they just followed their noses and always went for the bowl with the treat.

They had a second experiment involving a treat stuck inside a locked cage. The dog would attempt to get to the treat and after several attempts they would give up and appeal to the handler for assistance. The wolf would continue to get at the treat and become extremely agitated (never appealing to the handler for help).

They've found that the domesticated wolves were incapable of associative learning, while the dogs seemed to be preprogrammed for it. The wolves avoid human contact, since they are hunted and killed by humans. The domestic dog on the other hand requires human contact/interaction for it's survival. They've learned to read human facial expressions.
posted by plokent at 4:53 PM on February 21 [2 favorites]

Patricia McConnell's latest book includes dog photographs lined up with comparable human ones from Paul Ekman's Unmasking the Face, underlining Darwin's point that all of us mammals do basically the same stuff with our faces.
posted by tangerine at 5:03 PM on February 21

Interesting also to consider why humans show the whites of their eyes, which makes it easier to tell at a distance where their attention is directed. Most animals only have the colored iris and pupil exposed, so it is harder to tell the direction of their gaze.
posted by Good Brain at 5:56 PM on February 21

I dont understand why the assumption that animals are these stupid things that would mistake an elbow for an eye? First off, youre an animal. Theres no fundamental difference between you and a cat.

Youre a homo sapiens. Your a hairless gorilla. When you look at someone in the eye its not odd. Your instincts tell you that there is a lot of non-verbal communication in the eyes. As a mammal you have billions of years of evolution to keep the look out for eyes. The eyes of mates, enemies, predators, etc.

Your pet is a mammal too. You two have more in common than youre willing to accept if youre honestly asking this question.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:23 PM on February 21 [1 favorite]

I found cats have very complex "eye communication", and you can learn it too! For example they use the pattern "look you in the eye, half-close them slowly, open again". It means - as far as I understand - "I acknowledge your presence, I see you as a friend, all is well". For fun I started doing this too, and both my cat and my spouse seem to understand it instinctively :). The size of the pupils carries at lot of meaning too. Big pupils = aroused, active, maybe even prepared to fight. It's only natural animals would try to look into your eyes, just to get an idea what you're doing next or how your mood is.
posted by Nightwind at 1:05 AM on February 22 [1 favorite]

We've had many pets over the years and I've gotten more "meaningful" eye contact from a snake that any rodent. Besides dogs and cats, the pet with the ability to make eyecontact was a snake, so perhaps that lends credence to the predatory aspect of it.

When we first has the snake my son was too young to handle the feeding on his own so the snake knew that my presence met dinner. I would play with this a bit, and he/she would come to greet me and just stare at me until I got the gold fish in the bowl.
posted by readery at 5:41 AM on February 22

We reward them for it. They get our attention and love. We get to feel like they are interested in us.

In the case of our undersocialized rescue dog, we have had to train her to look at us -- to give us her full attention. She has to sit and look us in the eye for at least 10 seconds before she gets her kibble. She's capable of doing it for over a minute.

Our trainer told us that when she is not looking at us and refuses to look at us because she would rather look at the cat or the fluffy dog across the street or a "bad" man with a beard, she is being basically disrespectful of our authority. To break that concentration and have her focus on us and what we want her to do, she has to look at us. She learned this incredibly quickly -- within five minutes in the first session.

I have read that domesticated animals are FAR quicker to pick up on following a human's pointing finger, and that even puppies can do that. THAT is a really amazing skill, and I'm sure that is also reinforced and rewarded ("Josie, get that chip I just dropped on the floor! No, there! Over there!").
posted by fiercecupcake at 5:53 AM on February 22

OK, yes, humans are animals. We get it. Why does everyone insist on pointing that out, given the most unlikely of opportunities. Not helpful, not answering the question.

I sometimes wonder this as well, like how does a dog know where my eyes are? Why does he assume that the two round spots on my face are my eyes, and not like, my ears or something?
posted by lohmannn at 7:47 AM on February 22

Because if an animal through millions of years of evolution cannot make out the eyes of other animals then its going to be a biological failure and go extinct, the same way evolution has made us sensitive to eyes and faces even in other animals.
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:12 PM on February 22

Too out of it to look up references, but I read somewhere that cats take in information from a wider portion of their field of vision than we do, so that when a cat is staring straight ahead, it's actually still "looking around."

That doesn't answer why the cat is staring at you specifically, but it may explain why it does so for so long. It doesn't need to move its eyes to look away.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 12:43 PM on March 7