Hearing angry or happy human voices is linked to changes in dogs’ balance

(Press-News.org) In a small study, dogs experienced both stabilization and destabilization of their balance upon hearing angry or happy human voices, but angry voices were linked to the biggest destabilizing effects. Nadja Affenzeller and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS One on January 28, 2026.

For humans and animals alike, stable posture underpins the ability to stand still, walk, and perform other activities without falling. To maintain stability, our muscles rely on visual cues as well as the body’s sense of its own position. Recent research in humans suggests that external sounds may also influence stability, with high frequencies linked to destabilization and white noise to stabilization.

However, few studies have examined how sound affects postural stability for animals. To help clarify, Affenzeller and colleagues measured changes in balance for 23 pet dogs upon hearing recordings of happy versus angry human voices. They used a standard research technique in which the dogs stood on a pressure-sensing platform that detected small movements corresponding to five parameters linked with balance.

Compared with hearing no sound at all, hearing an angry human voice was associated with higher values of a parameter known as support surface—the area of the platform occupied by the swaying path of a dog’s center of pressure. Higher support surface values indicate destabilization, with greater body movements to stay balanced.

None of the four other stabilization parameters were consistently associated with either angry or happy voices. When the individual changes of all dogs were taken into account, the responses varied considerably between the dogs. Happy voices were linked with destabilization for 57 percent of the dogs and, surprisingly, stabilization—or “freezing”—for 43 percent. Meanwhile, angry voices were associated with the most severe destabilization in 30 percent of dogs, though 70 percent did not show stabilization changes.

These findings suggest angry and happy human voices may elicit emotional arousal that can both stabilize and destabilize balance. Further research could deepen understanding by exploring, for instance, whether prior experiences affect individual dogs’ reactions, and whether freezing in response to happy voices may be related to anticipatory adjustments in preparation for voluntary movements - such as an approach.

 

 

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/4qwgRe2

Citation: Affenzeller N, Aghapour M, Lutonsky C, Peham C, Bockstahler B (2026) Effects of happy and angry human voice recordings on postural stability in dogs: An exploratory biomechanical analysis. PLoS One 21(1): e0339979. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339979

Author countries: Austria

Funding: The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/P34959]. For open access purposes, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any author accepted manuscript version arising from this submission. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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