What does it mean when a dog wags its tail? Many people are wrong. He doesn’t always do it out of joy

Domesticated birds wag their tails more often than their wild relatives. According to the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the behavior of a dog’s tail is the result of evolution. Puppies do not have the habit of wagging their tails, but they acquire it by observing their mother and her behavior towards humans.

People bred dogs to wag their tails. This behavior is the result of evolution

Scientists came to two important conclusions. First of all, tail wagging is a result of the domestication process of dogs. Wild dogs use their tails in a completely different way, but it is still used for communication. The problem is that wild dogs communicate mainly with each other, while domestic dogs have been looking for a way to communicate with people for many years. Another aspect is appropriate breeding. According to scientists, the moving tail had an impact on the human brain, which is why many years ago, when dog breeds were just developing, breeders deliberately selected dogs that moved them more often.

Does it matter which direction a dog wags its tail? It turns out to be quite big

When we see a dog wagging its tail, we think it is friendly. This mistake can get us into big trouble. The tail is used by dogs to communicate, but it does not always mean contentment. Alexandra Horowitz and a team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing analyzed the movements of a dog’s tail and concluded that they depend on the work of the hemispheres. If the animal waves more to the right, it means that it is friendly, and if the tail moves more to the left, it suggests fear and anxiety, so such a dog is certainly not happy to see us. And although small movements may be imperceptible to the human eye, they are clues to other animals, which certainly notice subtle changes in our dog’s behavior.