Horváth Zsuzsánna, Dóka Antal, Miklósi Adám
Department of Ethology, Institute of Biology, Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Science, Budapest, Hungary.
Horm Behav. 2008 Jun;54(1):107-14. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2008.02.002. Epub 2008 Feb 15.
It has been shown that cortisol concentrations change characteristically in the course of agonistic interactions; our aim was to find out how a playful situation may affect concentrations of this hormone in the saliva. We studied dogs' behavior and the changes of cortisol concentrations in a play situation, where the dogs played with their handler for 3 min with a tug toy. In this experiment working dogs were divided into two groups by the type of their work, namely police dogs and border guard dogs. We found that the cortisol concentrations of old police dogs significantly increased, while the adult border guard dogs' hormone levels decreased, which shows that playing with the handler has an effect on both groups, but interestingly this effect was opposite. Behavior analysis showed differences only in the behavior of the human handlers during the play sessions, while the behavior analysis did not reveal significant differences in the two groups of dogs, except that old border guard dogs generally needed more time to begin playing than old police dogs. During the play sessions police officers were mainly disciplining their dogs, while the border guards were truly playing with them (including affiliative and affectionate behavior). Our results are in accordance with those of recent studies, which show that behaviors associated with control, authority or aggression increase cortisol concentrations, while play and affiliative behavior decrease cortisol levels.
研究表明，在争斗性互动过程中，皮质醇浓度会发生特征性变化；我们的目的是找出嬉戏情境如何影响唾液中这种激素的浓度。我们研究了狗在嬉戏情境中的行为以及皮质醇浓度的变化，在该情境中，狗与训练者用拔河玩具玩耍3分钟。在这个实验中，工作犬根据其工作类型分为两组，即警犬和边境牧羊犬。我们发现，老警犬的皮质醇浓度显著升高，而成年边境牧羊犬的激素水平下降，这表明与训练者玩耍对两组犬都有影响，但有趣的是，这种影响是相反的。行为分析表明，两组犬在嬉戏过程中的行为差异仅体现在训练者的行为上，而行为分析并未揭示两组犬之间存在显著差异，只是老边境牧羊犬通常比老警犬需要更多时间开始玩耍。在嬉戏过程中，警察主要是在训练他们的狗，而边境警卫则是真正地与狗玩耍（包括亲密和亲昵行为）。我们的结果与最近的研究结果一致，这些研究表明，与控制、权威或攻击相关的行为会增加皮质醇浓度，而玩耍和亲密行为会降低皮质醇水平。
