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Dogs evolved a special muscle that lets them make puppy dog eyes

It’s their “puppy dog eyes� that really help dogs melt our hearts – now we know they are created by a facial muscle that is lacking in the closely related wolf
dog looking at owner
An explanation for those puppy dog eyes
PavelRodimov/Getty

Human selection has resulted in dogs evolving more expressive faces. They have a facial muscle for making the “puppy dog eyes� that melt many peoples’ hearts that does not exist in wolves – the ancestors of dogs.

This muscle allows dogs to lift up their inner “eyebrow�, which makes their eye look larger. This makes them look more like childlike and also rather sad – the puppy dog eyes look.

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It really does make dogs more appealing to us. In 2013, Juliane Kaminski at the University of Portsmouth and colleagues videotaped dogs interacting with strangers at a shelter to see what made them more likely to be adopted.

“The only thing that seemed to have an effect is this eyebrow movement,� she says. Dogs that made this movement more often .

“It was a surprising result,� says Kaminski, who studies dog-human communication. “That got us really interested.�

In 2017, her team showed that .

Now Kaminski and some anatomists have dissected 6 dogs and 4 grey wolves to compare their facial muscles (they used existing specimens – no animals were killed for this study).

In dogs, the eyebrow motion is made by a muscle above their eyes, on the inner side nearer the nose, called the levator anguli oculi medialis. Five of the 6 dogs had this muscle. The one exception was a Siberian husky – an ancient breed more closely related to wolves than most dogs.

diagram of canine muscles
Dogs carry a muscle near the eye that wolves lack
Juliane Kaminski

In the wolves – which cannot raise their eyebrows as much – this muscle did not exist. In its place there was a small tendon partially connected to another muscle.

So Kaminski thinks this muscle evolved because people favoured dogs that make this expression.

“It is really different in structure,� she says. “It’s not just something that is used more.�

The movement appears to be under voluntary control, but there’s no evidence that dogs are intentionally using it to manipulate us.

PNAS

Topics: Dogs