In a groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers led by Mathilde Massenet and colleagues have demonstrated that mother dogs tailor their care based on vocal cues from their puppies. Using advanced audio resynthesis techniques, the team created highly realistic, synthetic puppy whines that mimicked the vocal characteristics of real litters.
In controlled playback experiments, mother dogs responded most strongly to whines that were modified to match the pitch range of their own litter. More strikingly, they were especially responsive to whines resynthesized to simulate those of their weaker or smaller puppies. This indicates that the pitch of a puppy’s cry carries critical information not just about relatedness (kin recognition) but also about the pup’s condition or need.
The study’s findings confirm that vocal communication in dogs—especially in early life—plays a dual role: enabling mothers to discriminate between kin and providing cues about which puppies may require more urgent care. This form of sound-based decision-making highlights a sophisticated mechanism of maternal investment rarely documented with such precision in mammals rearing multiple young.
The implications of this research are significant for canine welfare and breeding practices. By better understanding how dog mothers naturally prioritize care, breeders and veterinarians may one day develop vocal-based monitoring tools to assess puppy well-being in real-time, potentially improving survival and developmental outcomes for vulnerable pups.
Source: Mathilde Massenet, Romain Philippe, Katarzyna Pisanski, Virginie Arnaud, Laura B. Beauchesne, Karine Reynaud, Nicolas Mathevon, David Reby. “Puppy whines mediate maternal behavior in domestic dogs.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Volume 121, 2024-05-20. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2403503121
