Why Furry Animals “Sweet Dog” Comes Down to Science

When hairy mammals feel something on their back, they will emit a “wet dog shake”. If you’ve ever been within range of a dog splashing out of a pool, you’ve probably been close to experiencing its success. We’ve all seen it, but the neural mechanisms that underpin behavior remain a mystery – until now.

While it’s fun to watch silly-faced dogs do this, this moving behavior also serves an important purpose as it can help them remove irritating and potentially harmful waste from their bodies. Therefore, understanding how it occurs can help determine why it has been evolutionarily conserved across many fur-bearing animals.

We hypothesize that C-LTMRs may also be involved in anxiety disorders.

Dr. Dawei Zhang

Mice are another species that shows the movement of a wet dog, so a group of scientists used them as a model to examine the neurobiological foundations of behavior. Their research identified a type of light-touch-sensitive mechanoreceptor in the skin that combines an evolutionarily conserved behavior, associated with the protein Piezo2 and C-fiber low-threshold mechanoreceptors, or C-LTMRs.

You can make a wet dog shiver inside a mouse by putting drops of oil on its back, but to get the behavior, the team needed to find an additional technique. Another method they used involved using optogenetics, which enables scientists to control certain nerve fibers using light. By using light in this way, they realized that they could make the wet dog move inside the mice, even when there were no drops of oil applied to their backs. They also used ablation, which involves removing or blocking neurons – and when the group removed C-LTMR, the mice stopped moving as much.

The main role of C-LTMRs is to maintain undercoat hair follicles for furry mammals, and they are involved in the pleasant sensation of touch (which is why good guys love pets a lot). The same mechanoreceptors seem to activate when a sticky substance reaches the back of the fluffy mammal, sending a message to the spinoparabrachial neurons that relay the message to the brain.

We know this because when the team blocked spinoparabrachial neuron synapses, they couldn’t get the wet dog out of the mice using optogenetics. or real drops of body oil. The same problem was seen when they blocked the excitatory neurons in the part of the brain that was on the receiving side of the spinoparabrachial neurons.

Now, we humans may not be covered in fur, but this neural pathway may be behind our biggest Achilles’ heel: the dreaded nerve.

“When C-LTMRs were first discovered in cats, scientist Zotterman (published in 1939) found that C-LTMRs continued to respond/fire after stimulation (stroking the cat’s skin and fur) ) stopped, while many other neurons stopped firing when the stimulus stopped,” first author Dawei Zhang of the Neuroscience Program at Harvard University told IFScience. “This is consistent with feelings that persist in people even after the stimulus has stopped and makes them think that C-LTMRs convey pleasant feelings.”

“In our experiments, we noticed that the movements of wet dogs often correspond to the behavior of mice. When we reduced C-LTMR, in addition to the reduction of WDS, we also saw a reduction in spoiling. therefore, we hypothesize that C-LTMRs may also contribute to emotional patterns.”

An interesting insight into the animals that shake it, now, and next time the team can turn to the invisible ones that make a wet dog move.

“It would be interesting to explore how these advanced electrical devices are produced by the nervous system, more than just understanding the role of hearing,” added Zhang. It would also be interesting to understand why some animals do not tolerate wet dogs—whether due to differences in hearing, motor or other parts of the nervous system.”

The study is published in the journal Science.