ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Does your dog watch TV when you do? Mine typically fall asleep. But if yours are glued to the screen, well, a new study aims to better understand their TV-viewing behaviors. NPR's Nate Rott reports.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: A few years ago, Jeff Katz was at home, kicked back.
JEFF KATZ: Watching TV, and I got this, oh, new dog TV channel free for the weekend, and I'm like, what's that?
ROTT: Yes, it's a thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: Dog TV, a hundred percent programming just for dogs.
ROTT: Katz, a professor of psychological sciences at Auburn University, had questions.
KATZ: Like, who made decisions about what goes into this show, and, like, do dogs really watch it or not? And I was just curious. And, you know, it just - when I looked into it, we just didn't really know a lot about how dogs watch TV.
ROTT: Katz studies animal behavior. So with a graduate student, he set up a survey asking pet owners when their dogs do watch TV...
KATZ: What kind of shows do they watch? But we got more specific, and we gave them categories. And we asked them - do they respond to videos of dogs, videos of household pets? - and different categories.
ROTT: The results from 650 dog owners, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found a couple of correlations between viewing behavior and dog personalities.
KATZ: So one was, if you have a energetic dog, they're more likely to follow objects off-screen.
ROTT: Like if a bird flies off-screen, the dog looked for it on the neighboring wall. Katz says the other was that anxious dogs were more likely to respond to stimuli like...
KATZ: Car horns and doorbells.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOORBELL RING)
ROTT: Wicket (ph).
Yes, that's my dog barking at a real doorbell. Anxious is one of the top descriptors I would assign to him, along with cuddly and cute. But he's never responded to the TV. So I set up my own little experiment.
Up, up. Let's go. Come on. Good boy.
Playing doorbell sound effects on YouTube.
Ready, buddy?
(SOUNDBITE OF DOORBELL RING)
ROTT: Nothing.
Katz says some dogs just don't respond to TVs. But he's hoping to do more research on those that do because it could help couch potatoes and their furry companions better enjoy their favorite shows. Nate Rott, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEAL FRANCIS SONG, "DON'T CALL ME NO MORE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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