Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences, Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, College Station, Texas, USA.
J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2022 Oct 6;77(10):1986-1993. doi: 10.1093/gerona/glac099.
While there has been an abundance of studies on the important relationship between physical activity and age in both dogs and humans, studies on dogs have primarily focused on how a dog's biological characteristics, such as their weight, affect the age-activity relationship. To date, there is little knowledge about how this relationship may be associated with contextual- and owner-level characteristics. We leveraged a large and novel data set from the Dog Aging Project (DAP) to investigate the extent to which the age-activity relationship is associated with certain dog and owner characteristics, namely dog size, owner age, and the environment in which they live. Dogs are a unique model for aging research as they are exposed to similar social and environmental elements as humans but have a shorter life span, allowing researchers to observe their entire life course. We find that older dogs are less active than younger dogs; rural dogs are more active than suburban and urban dogs, especially at younger ages; and larger dogs are more active than smaller dogs. These findings are generally consistent with previous studies. However, a surprising finding is that older owners have more active dogs than younger owners. As one of the first studies to utilize the large survey data from the DAP, this study lays the foundation for future investigations to further understand and identify the biological, social, and environmental causes, as well as consequences, of aging.
虽然有大量关于运动与年龄之间的重要关系的研究在狗和人类中进行，但狗的研究主要集中在狗的生物学特征（如体重）如何影响年龄与活动之间的关系。迄今为止，关于这种关系如何与环境和主人特征相关的知识还很少。我们利用来自狗衰老项目（DAP）的一个大型新颖数据集，调查了年龄与活动之间的关系与某些狗和主人特征的关联程度，这些特征包括狗的体型、主人的年龄以及他们生活的环境。狗是衰老研究的独特模型，因为它们暴露在与人类相似的社会和环境因素中，但寿命较短，这使得研究人员能够观察它们的整个生命周期。我们发现，年龄较大的狗比年轻的狗不活跃；农村的狗比郊区和城市的狗更活跃，尤其是在年幼时；体型较大的狗比体型较小的狗更活跃。这些发现与以前的研究基本一致。然而，一个令人惊讶的发现是，年龄较大的主人的狗比年轻的主人的狗更活跃。作为利用 DAP 大型调查数据进行的首批研究之一，本研究为未来的研究奠定了基础，以进一步了解和确定衰老的生物学、社会和环境原因以及后果。
