Left shaking or right?The dog tail "has something to say"!

Text ｜ "China Science News" reporter Feng Lifei

As the saying goes, the eyes are the windows of the soul. For dogs, the tail is an emotional window.

"When they are happy, their tails will shake very quickly; when they are angry, their tails will be tilted; when they are afraid, they will run away with their tails." Many years of research allows Zhang Yongqing, a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Development Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Details.

Recent Human relations are more familiar.

They also found that they are similar to human fingerprints and gait, and each dog shows unique and stable shaking features. Related results are recently published online in "Cross Science".

"This is a very important and creative study in biology and computing science." A reviewer commented.

A Big dog shot at the Changping Experimental Base of the Institute of Genetics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When the puppy first started to see the reporter, he was panicked and shook his tail violently. Since then, he gradually calmed down and occasionally looked at the reporter. Photo by Feng Lifei

Tail is more friendly

At the end of July, there was a burst of dog barking from time to time in a laboratory in a green test field in Changping District, Beijing. There are eighty or ninety Big dogs in large and small.

According to Zhang Yongqing, this is the "001" project of dog research in Beijing.

In the past three years, Zhang Yongqing's team has built the time and space expression map of the whole brain protein group of the family dog, and used the experimental dog to study the correlation between human atherosclerosis and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

Recently, they aimed at the dog to shake their tail again.

"Animal behavior is a display of brain function, and its social behavior is vital to the survival of animal individuals. The tail swing of the family dog ​​is an important social behavior of interaction between dogs and dogs, dogs, and people." Doctoral student Ren Wei said.

For the first time, the cooperation team discovered that in the three days of interaction with people, the tail swing of the family dog ​​gradually shifted from the left side to the right, and the phenotype of each dog was very stable, indicating that its tail swaying side -to -side side It is a sensitive indicator that represents familiarity.

"In short, when interacting with unfamiliar people, the dog's tail shakes left; and when interacting with familiar people, the tail swing is right." Zhang Yongqing said.

Studies have also found that, just like everyone has a unique fingerprint and gait, dogs also have unique and stable shaking features.

Based on this, the study introduced the concept of "attractive children" in the research of dynamic systems into an analysis of the tail pattern. For the first time, it was found that the family canine tail swing consists of an attractive child state and unstable transition state with a class with a stable swing trajectory.

"The state of attractive children refers to the stable and duplicate mode shown in the tail trajectory of dogs, such as circular trajectory,‘ 8 -character ’ -shaped trajectory and other stereotypes.” Yu Shan, the author of the paper, explained.

21,000 deep learning, receiving one month

This biological discovery is inseparable from the support of artificial intelligence deep learning technology.

More than ten years ago, Italian scientists analyzed the dog's tail, mainly through recording videos and manual observation. The resolution of data was low, and the analysis was difficult to deepen.

With the advancement of computer vision technology, it is possible to use deep learning algorithms for more comprehensive and in -depth quantitative analysis.

"The deep learning here is to enter the dog's picture into the neural network model. Use some pictures of the body (such as the back, the tail, the tip tip, etc.) in the artificial label in some pictures to train the model A large number of new pictures automatically identify the process of these body parts. "Yu Shan introduced.

The cooperation team has set up a three -dimensional sports tracking technology platform based on deep learning, and systematically studies the trajectory of 13 Big dogs during the interaction with people.

They analyzed a total of more than 21,000 dogs that shake their tails, including the speed, amplitude and distance of tail movement.

On this basis, the ends of the tail characteristics of dogs interacted with people were quantitatively studied, and the dynamic details of the family dog ​​behavior that had not been noticed before were discovered.

The author said that these details reveal the complex characteristics and formation of tail swing behavior in the process of interaction with human beings, and provide a unique experimental paradigm for the study dog's social behavior and potential neural mechanisms.

Zhang Yongqing said that people usually think that the left and right brains are divided into division of labor, and the positive and negative emotional state is related to the activation of the left and right sides of the forehead cortex.

"We speculate that the tail to the left may be accompanied by the activation of the right brain, and the tail to the right may be accompanied by the activation of the frontal leaf cortex of the left brain." He said, "The left brain is responsible for dealing with positive emotions, indicating that the right shake of the tail shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shake is the right shaking of the right shake is The dog is happy or comfortable; the opposite situation may mean that the dog is afraid or nervous. "

According to reports, this is currently the first study of the emotional behavior of the dog's dogs using artificial intelligence methods. Its innovation and interest make the paper submitted for only one month.

Dog Tail Study "Can't Be underestimated"

So, what is the significance of this research? Zhang Yongqing said that life science and medical research requires animal models. In the past half a century, experimental mouse models have played a huge role internationally, but there are many questions that cannot be answered, such as the pathogenesis related to emotional neural mechanisms or mental illness. And treatment means. To this end, the world is looking for more effective model animals. "After more than 30,000 domestic dogs, the biggest feature is spirituality and can have effective emotional exchanges with people. Life science, medicine, and even psychology can be used as model animals, "he said.

So far, the use of domestic dogs as model animals has won two Nobel Prize in physiology or medical award, including the pioneering achievements of Pavlov in 1904 in digestion system physiology, and 1923 Frederik · Grant Bantin saved millions of diabetic patients for discovering insulin.

"Human emotional research is one of the internationally recognized 125 major issues published by Science magazine. In the future, family dogs will definitely have unique contributions in this regard."

Zhang Yongqing believes that China has two advantages: our national dog gene editing technology is at the forefront of the world; social culture is more tolerant and allows related research. This has made my country a breakthrough and contribution to the research of social and emotional neural circuit mechanisms through the family dog ​​model.

In Yu Shan's view, the cross -disciplinary crossing will become more and more important in the future. Just as deep learning helps to discover the law of dog shaking tails, the cross -disciplinary crossing makes biological research have strong new tools and can explore a deeper mechanism.

"Biology is an experimental science, and a higher accuracy analysis method makes the observation of biological phenomena from qualitative to a disadvantage, and then towards the understanding of the mechanism." He said.

Zhang Yongqing said that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discipline integration in this regard. He hopes to improve scientific and technological innovation capabilities through more in -depth interdisciplinary research. By conducting research on domestic dogs as medical and healthy models, it will provide scientific and technological support for my country's life sciences and population health in the next decade or even two or 30 years. There is a place in the field of relevant international research.

Related thesis information:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104747

"China Science News" (2022-08-03 The 4th edition of the original title "Artificial Intelligence Discovery Dog Tail" Talking "")

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Edit | Zhao Lu

Capture | Guo Gang

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