The Functional Significance of Motor Laterality in Dogs
Proposed supervisor: Dr Paul McGreevy (02 93512810) Email:
Other members of research team: Dr Alan Wilton (UNSW)
Research one of the most important individual differences in guide dogs and make a difference to our understanding and training of dogs in general!
Laterality (left and right pawedness) in guide dogs is likely to be an especially important attribute since these dogs are required to walk exclusively on the left-hand side of their handler. It may be that this convention favours dogs with sensory laterality dominated by the right hemisphere e.g., because this facilitates observation of the visual environment by the left eye. This convention is also rigorously adhered to in police dog training.
The predominance of different breeds for these two types of work (German shepherd dogs for general purpose police work and retrievers for guiding) will allow us to examine variation in laterality. We will expand this theme by testing a selection of morphologically diverse breeds for laterality and then pool the data from all dogs to establish the heritability of lateral motor preferences and identify candidate genes for this trait.
Aims
· To describe the influence of laterality on performance in trainee guide dogs and police dogs.
· To explore breed differences in laterality in the domestic dog.
· To estimate heritability of laterality in the domestic dog.
· To explore the relationship between skull length and laterality in the domestic dog.
· To investigate the relationship between laterality and breed-specific behavioural traits
· To investigate the extent to which allelic variation at candidate genes is responsible for differences in foreleg motor preference in the domestic dog.
Once working-dog trainers know more about the strengths and limitations of left- and right-preferent dogs, they will need to train fewer dogs because they can select the correct ones at the outset of training. At the same time, having a significant motor preference may make a dog generally less able to work on a given side of the handler’s body, so the proposed study should serve to challenge the world-wide left-of-handler convention and allow dogs to be deployed effectively despite an otherwise unhelpful behavioural tendency. So, there are at least two ways in which this project will provide solutions to significant industry problems. Efficiency of training will be enhanced along with strategic selection of appropriate animals for given tasks.
This project is enthusiastically supported by the Guide Dog Association NSW/ACT and NSW Police Force’s Dog Unit.
We invite a veterinarian or animal scientist (preferably with a demonstrable interest in dog training) to join the team and undertake a PhD commencing 2006. Please contact Dr Paul McGreevy, Ph:02 93512810, Email: