Why Do Dogs Love To Lick Their Faces?
Why do dogs love to lick their faces? To answer this question it is necessary to keep in mind the basic concept: the dog is able to recognize our face. In addition, he has the wolf as an ancestor.
In a wolf family, when the parents return to the den after hunting, they are greeted by the cubs with noises and licks on the face. This gesture has a double purpose: first of all it is a greeting in all respects, but it also gives adults a way to introduce food into the puppies’ mouth. The cubs draw attention and nourishment from their parents by licking their faces. This behavior was, in some ways, inherited from dogs.
Dogs love to lick their faces for several reasons
Licking the face is, above all, a gesture of familiarity, a greeting, but also a way to attract our attention. It is, again, a message of calm and serenity, with which the dog tells us that there are no threats, that everything is calm and is ready to play or interact when we want. If we are berating the dog or have adopted an attitude that makes him feel intimidated or insecure, the animal may try to lick our face in order to calm us down and release the tension.
Another important goal related to face licking is the search for information: where we have been, what we have eaten, etc. With a single lick on the face, dogs can achieve all of this.
Conditioning also plays its part. If the animal has already understood that licking our face causes us to laugh and makes us feel good, it is possible that it is looking only for this: to have fun together.
Types of kiss
Just as human beings can exchange many types of kisses – love, desire, affection, friendship, fast or long – the licking of a dog is equivalent to our kiss or a caress. It is a loving way to recognize ourselves, explore and discover something about ourselves.
Dogs show affection for people in many ways. One of the most important is through language. It is not strange that they lick our faces or even inside our ears. Already as a puppy, our dog learns to “speak” with his tongue and licking his face is one of the ways he has available.
Research
Several researches confirm that dogs react to the moods of their owners, such as happiness or sadness. Their behavior is influenced by our expressions, which they perceive instantly.
In the course of these searches, when the person was happy, the dog would approach with a playful or friendly air. If, on the other hand, he assumed a sad expression or was crying, the dog reacted by licking his hands or face, smelling it with affection or stroking it with his whole body.
In the latter situation, the dog perceived that the person was going through a bad moment and licking served to show “solidarity”, closeness.
The interaction, therefore, is total. Nothing that happens to us goes unnoticed by our friend, even if most of the time we don’t realize it.
The dog manages to “get in tune” with us, developing what can be defined as “emotional contagion”, that is, getting to feel what we ourselves feel. These researches have yielded truly amazing results.
Other studies have shown that dogs get infected by our yawns. During the tests, half of the dogs yawned at the sound of the human yawn. Also, if the owner yawned, the likelihood of the dog yawning too was five times higher.
While these studies fail to conclude that dogs’ empathy is the same as that of humans, it is a fact that our feelings and facial expressions affect their mood and behavior.
Isn’t this further proof that dogs are man’s best friend? Licking our face is a demonstration of this.
