Parma, 27 August 2026 – Dogs blink more often when they see their owners blinking, supporting the hypothesis that this behaviour, although primarily physiological, may also have a social function.
This is the finding of the University of Parma study Blinking together: the modulation of eye blinking in dog–human social contexts, recently published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.260512).
The research was conducted by Chiara Canori, Eleonora Biffi, Tiziano Travain and Paola Valsecchi. Chiara Canori and Eleonora Biffi, PhD candidates in Neuroscience, are joint first authors. The study was supervised by Paola Valsecchi, who teaches Ethology in the Department of Chemistry, Life Sciences and Environmental Sustainability.
The study builds on research previously undertaken by the University of Parma’s Dog Ethology Laboratory into the phenomenon of eye blinking. In humans and some non-human primates, blinking has been associated not only with a physiological function but also with a possible social role.
The researchers showed 35 dogs of different breeds a series of videos featuring people looking at them. Depending on the experimental condition, the people either blinked or maintained a still facial expression. The person shown in each video was either the dog’s owner or a stranger. This enabled the researchers to isolate human blinking and separate it from everything else that normally occurs during a real social exchange—that is, from all the other elements involved in an in-person interaction.
The results showed that the dogs’ blink rate increased when they watched their owner blinking; the same effect was not observed when they watched strangers.
This suggests that the social relevance of the person with whom the dog is interacting plays an important role.
The researchers did not observe the dogs blinking in synchrony with the person. This suggests that changes in blink rate and temporal synchronisation may be two distinct phenomena. The absence of synchronisation may be linked to the use of prerecorded video stimuli, which did not allow for a truly reciprocal, real-time interaction.
The study’s findings do not allow researchers to conclude that, when a dog blinks, it is deliberately conveying a specific message—in other words, that it is intentionally “saying” something. Blinking remains first and foremost a physiological behaviour, essential for protecting the surface of the eye and keeping it moist. However, the research suggests that this automatic action is highly sensitive to the social context and can be modulated according to the person the dog is observing. Dogs therefore appear to be sensitive to human blinking, and their own blinking behaviour may change depending on whom they are facing.
More broadly, the study indicates that communication between dogs and humans may be far subtler than we usually perceive. Dogs pay close attention to human faces, and even extremely slight movements, such as the blink of an eye, may contribute to the continuous exchange of information and feedback that takes place during social interaction.
