The battle of the sexes has just heated up—in dogs. A new study finds that when a ball appears to magically change size in front of their eyes, female dogs notice but males don't. The researchers aren't sure what's behind the disparity, but experts say the finding supports the idea that—in some situations—male dogs trust their noses, whereas females trust their eyes.
The study, published online today in Biology Letters, didn't set out to find sex differences. Cognitive biologist Corsin Müller and his colleagues at the University of Vienna and its Clever Dog Lab wanted to find out how good dogs are at size constancy—the ability to recognize that an object shouldn't change size if it disappears for a moment. But they recruited 25 female and 25 male dogs for the study, just to be safe.
It's probably the same for humans, different neurological wiring. To read the rest of the article, click here.