Bio-Lancaster Fanning, Saturday. April 23, 1994
Why Do Dogs Bark?
No One Knows For Sure
DONALD J. FREDERICK
National* Geographic
News Service
Woof! Woof! Woof! There it
goes again, your neighbor’s loud
mouthed dog. It’s enough to drive
you crazy.
Well, you may as well stop com
plaining, because nobody has fig
ured out a fool-proof way to keep a
raucous dog quiet. In fact, scien
tists can’t even agree on why most
dogs bark.
“It’s because they’re immature
characters, like teen-agers, very
hard to train,” says dog expert
Raymond Coppinger, a biologist at
Hampshire College in Amherst,
Mass.
Unlike their wild wolf relatives,
which stop barking as they mature,
dogs develop into noisemakers
because of domestication, Coppin
ger theorizes. Instead of achieving
“a rich adult repertoire of wolflike
guttural growls and snarls,” he
says, “they became perpetual ado
lescents and come out with some
thing we affectionately call the
bark.”
Coppinger once clocked a sheep
dog in a remote Minnesota field
that barked non-stop for seven
hours. “I don’t know if the dog is a
record-holder, but I’m certainly
the record-holder for listening
without interrupting,” he says with
a rueful grin.
Even Coppinger stands in awe
of the researcher who timed a
A pooch voices displeasure at a painter. Many dogs need
little or no excuse to bark, an exercise that may last lor
hours. Scientists don’t agree on the reasons dogs vocalize.
Animals that sound off for no apparent cause are frequently
called “boredom barkers,” but training failures by their
owners may be to blame.
cocker spaniel that yapped 907
times in 10 minutes.
Almost anything can set off a
canine barking jab. “Dogs can bark
at the moon, the wind or the rus
tling of trees,” says Mark Feins
tein, a professor of cognitive sci
ence at Hampshire.
“Sometimes they bark when
there appears to be nothing hap
pening at all. There seem to be an
astonishing number of reasons,
and it’s unusual in the animal king
dom, where most creatures tend to
vocalizel for a few specifics such
as defending territories or finding
mates.”
Dogs that sound off because
they have nothing better to do are
called “boredom barkers,” says
Bonnie V. Beaver, chief of small
animal medicine and surgery at
Texas A&M University.
“Dogs are social,” she tells
National Geographic. “Keeping a
pet shut up in the back yard with
out any human interaction isn’t
realistic. They’re going to do
something. They’ll dig, bark, jump
over the fence or run in circles.
That’s basically all they can do.
You’ve got to look for what’s driv
ing the animal to a particular
behavior.”
The secret of dogs’ communica
tion lies in the pitch and frequency
of their baking, says Stanley
Coren, a psychologist at the Uni
versity of British Columbia who
has studied canine intelligence.
Harsh training elicits menacing snarls from a dog in Kenya. Some experts think
dogs communicate through the pitch and frequency of their barks. Lower tones con
vey threats, and rapid-fire sounds warn of approaching strangers. Dogs may bark at
anything, and nobody has figured out how to keep them quiet.
“A higher-pitched bark can
mean a dog’s frightened, and a
lower tone can convey a threat,” he
says. “A quick burst of four or five
barks, the kind you hear when
someone comes to the door, means
‘Come over herd, someone’s
invading our territory.’ Then
there’s die bark with a stutter to it
that’s an invitation to play.”
Some owners inadvertently turn
Bowser into a loudmouth. The pet
starts howling in the yard about
midnight. “Shut up, you stupid
mutt!” someone shouts.
“The dog gets rewarded with a
voice response, so it barks even
more.” Beaver explains, “and
eventually it gets to come inside.
That dog’s training its owners very
well."
Reacting to complaints, many
communities have passed anti
barking laws. “Of course they
don’t stop dogs from barking,”
Beavers says, “but all of a sudden
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you’ve got a lot of frustrated own
ers looking for quick fixes instead
of trying to deal with the initial
problem of why their animals are
barking.”
Seeking instant cures, some dog
owners have gone to such lengths
as noise-activated devices that
emit offensive odors or squirt
water on offenders. A British
inventor recently came up with a
gadget that hangs around a dog’s
neck and emits a pungent lemon
aroma every time the animal barks.
Typical anti-bark collars produce
unpleasant sounds or mild electric
shocks.
Most such contraptions have
one thing in common, the experts
say: They don’t work.
“Almost nothing will keep ter
riers from barking; it’s in their
genes,” says Corcn. “Everybody
who owns a little terrier will tell
you that its favorite game of all
time is imaginary burglar. And it’s
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always played between two or
three o-clock in the morning, when
in fact the dog is announcing that a
leaf has fallen against the wall of
the house.”
But Coren is also convinced that
canine heroes have saved many
human lives with their clamor. “I
tend to believe that barking dogs
are often called for help or alertin|
people, whom they consider mem
bers of their pact, that something is
going on,” he says.
Heroes aside, how do you
silence a noisy dog? Coren has a
soothing solution: “No yelling;
you don’t say a word. Instead, you
just stroke the dog, sort of run your
hands along his head, down along
the side of his chest and maybe a
bit along the back. The dog will
interpret that as meaning ‘All’s
well, there must not be anything to
bark about.’”
You hope.
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