It might sound far-fetched, but recent research suggests that dogs’ and humans’ brains synchronize when they look at each other.

This research, conducted by researchers in China, is the first time that “neural coupling” between different species has been witnessed.

Neural coupling is when the brain activity of two or more individuals aligns during an interaction. For humans, this is often in response to a conversation or story.

Neural coupling has been observed when members of the same species interact, including mice, bats, humans and other primates. This linking of brains is probably important in shaping responses during social encounters and might result in complex behavior that would not be seen in isolation, such as enhancing teamwork or learning.

When social species interact, their brains “connect”. But this case of it happening between different species raises interesting considerations about the subtleties of the human-dog relationship and might help us understand each other a little better.

What’s new puppy dog?

The dog was one of the first animals humans domesticated. And they have a long history of sharing time and space with us. Dogs are not only companions for us, they also have key roles in our society, including therapeutic support, detecting diseases and protecting and herding livestock.

As a result, dogs have developed some impressive skills, including the ability to recognize and respond to our emotional state.

In the recent study, the researchers studied neural coupling using brain-activity recording equipment called non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG). This uses headgear containing electrodes that detect neural signals—in this case, from the beagles and humans involved in the study.

Researchers examined what happened to these neural signals when dogs and people were isolated from each other, and in the presence of each other, but without looking at each other. Dogs and humans were then allowed to interact with each other.

Look into my eyes

When dogs and humans gazed at each other and the dogs were stroked, their brain signals synchronized. The brain patterns in key areas of the brain associated with attention, matched in both dog and person.

Dogs and people who became more familiar with each other over the five days of the study had increased synchronization of neural signals. Previous studies of human-human interactions have found increased familiarity between people also resulted in more closely matching brain patterns. So the depth of relationship between people and dogs may make neural coupling stronger.

The ability of dogs to form strong attachments with people is well known. A 2022 study found the presence of familiar humans could reduce stress responses in young wolves, the dog’s close relative. Forming neural connections with people might be one of the ways by which the dog-human relationship develops.

The researchers also studied the potential effect of differences in the brain on neural coupling. They did this by including dogs with a mutation in a gene called Shank3, which can lead to impaired neural connectivity in brain areas linked with attention. This gene is responsible for making a protein that helps promote communication between cells, and is especially abundant in the brain. Mutations in Shank3 have also been associated with autism spectrum disorder in humans.

Study dogs with the Shank3 mutation did not show the same level of matching brain signals with people as those without the mutation. This was potentially because of impaired neural signaling and processing.

However, when researchers gave the study dogs with the Shank3 mutation a single dose of LSD (a hallucinogenic drug), they showed increased levels of attention and restored neural coupling with humans.

LSD is known to promote social behavior in mice and humans, although clearly there are ethical concerns about such treatment.

The researchers were clear that there remains much to be learned about neural coupling between dogs and humans.

It might well be the case that looking into your dog’s eyes means that your respective brain signals will synchronize and enhance your connection. The more familiar you are with each other, the stronger it becomes, it seems.

So the next time a dog gazes at you with their puppy dog eyes, remember you could be enhancing your relationship.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Even for a conservation biologist numbed to bad news about nature, the biennial Living Planet report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is a stark reminder of our failure to arrest the loss of biodiversity—the variety of living things and the ecosystems they live in.

The 2024 report uses an index that has tracked the fate of 35,000 populations of 5,495 species of wild vertebrates—that’s animals with a spinal column, so mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish—from 1970 to the present day. Over the past 50 years (1970–2020), the average size of these monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73%.

Freshwater populations (think fish, frogs and salamanders) are doing much worse, declining by 85%. Marine populations are faring slightly better, with declines of 56%. However, given emerging threats to the ocean ranging from microplastic accumulation to deep-sea mining, it is best not to regard these figures as absolute guides to conservation priorities.

There is also huge regional variation in these results. Latin America and the Caribbean have reported 95% declines in wild vertebrate populations since 1970, compared with 35% in Europe and Central Asia.

What these results tell us

Has the world lost nearly three-quarters of all its wildlife? Well, no. The trends actually reflect relative changes in population sizes. These may encompass trends for the same species faring differently in different regions. The challenge of compressing so much variation into a single index can create confusion. Many assume the figure relates to an absolute measure of loss of individuals or extinctions.

The Living Planet Index used in this report has attracted periodic criticism from ecologists. It was recently argued that removing sparse data from poorly monitored populations (more often in the tropics) is necessary to reduce bias. However, these biases are inherent in our understanding of the conservation status of wildlife.

There are more studies from countries in the temperate zone (Europe and North America, for example) and fewer from tropical ones; there are more studies on large or attractive birds and mammals, but fewer on everything else. Removing what sparse data we have from the tropics just compounds these biases.

The smaller declines in Europe and elsewhere in Earth’s temperate zone can be misleading. Huge changes in the populations of vertebrate life took place here millennia ago when agricultural expansion erased most of the forests, natural grasslands and wetlands. The cumulative change across the ages is certainly far higher than the rather arbitrary 1970 baseline reveals. Ecologists call this “shifting baseline syndrome”.

Crucially, scientists lack long-term monitoring data for most tropical species that are threatened by massive habitat losses happening right now. Conservation biology is a crisis discipline—it can’t wait until all available data is in before sounding the alarm.

There is broad agreement between many data sources that biodiversity is being eroded at a planetary scale. For example, research I led has highlighted that about half of all bird species probably have declining populations, versus 6% with increasing trends.

Tipping points

Beyond species, the WWF report has a particular focus on planetary tipping points. These are thresholds in the Earth system which, if breached, lead to irreversible consequences for people and nature.

For example, there may exist a tipping point beyond which the Amazon rainforest rapidly dies off. The regional climate is already shifting, with decreasing and less predictable rainfall coupled with a lengthening dry season that heightens wildfire risk. Deforestation is accelerating this process, as the trees themselves generate the humidity the forest needs to survive.

Studies suggest that once around 20–25% of the total forest has been lost, the entire ecosystem could degenerate into some form of more open wooded ecosystem that would harbor much less carbon and far fewer species. Forest loss is currently around 17%.

This would not only unleash a cascade of extinctions for Amazonian biodiversity. It would also have local, regional and global effects on the climate that could imperil crops across the western hemisphere and beyond. Amazonian wildlife also has an incredibly important role in keeping the rainforest resilient, as do species in other ecosystems at risk of crossing tipping points.

The report is right to dwell on conservation success stories, such as the reintroduction and legal protection of the European bison and Dalmatian pelican. However, the return of many large mammals to Europe has been enabled by fewer human-wildlife conflicts as farmland has been abandoned. It isn’t, as some have claimed, a sign that economic development invariably leads to nature recovery.

This land has been abandoned to nature because of globalization of the food system. Essentially, it can be more profitable to produce food on better-quality land elsewhere. So, a gain for gray wolves in Bulgaria may have a bearing on the loss of habitat for maned wolves in Brazil, where species-rich savanna is converted to fields of soybeans that are then shipped to Europe to feed farmed animals.

What do we do?

These interconnected outcomes speak to the overarching challenge that humanity faces. Is exporting soybeans grown on land that was once rainforest to feed far-off fish farms the best use of resources? The report mentions food 181 times, as its production is the leading cause of habitat loss on land.

Even if data on population trends for tropical species is sparse, satellite and ground-based assessments are unanimous in showing a reduction in the extent of tropical habitats such as rainforests and savannas. Their replacement with farms and other land uses will not support the original biodiversity. So the implications of what we put on our plates reverberate across the biosphere.

Changing our patterns of consumption is critical to both stopping habitat loss and sparing land for wildlife and the ecosystem services that global agriculture is dependent on.

Protected areas have long been a cornerstone of measures to protect biodiversity. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity agreement asks that 30% of lands, waters and sea be protected by 2030. The UK has committed to this challenge, but already recognizes that it is failing. The latest progress report states that only 2.9% of England’s land is effectively protected and well managed for nature.

The report acknowledges that protected areas are not delivering and urges the strengthening of Indigenous and local land tenure, payments for ecosystem services and more sustainable management. Most conservation biologists would agree.

As previously highlighted, there is a dire need to challenge the prevailing neoliberal development model and tackle wealth-related drivers of biodiversity loss, such as the globalized commodity trade and carbon emissions.

The best time to do that would have been in 1970. The second best time is now.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

With a neon-green net in hand, Annette Prince briskly walks a downtown Chicago plaza at dawn, looking left and right as she goes.

It’s not long before she spots a tiny yellow bird sitting on the concrete. It doesn’t fly away, and she quickly nets the bird, gently places it inside a paper bag and labels the bag with the date, time and place.

“This is a Nashville warbler,” said Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, noting that the bird must have flown into a glass window pane of an adjacent building. “He must only weigh about two pennies. He’s squinting his eyes because his head hurts.”

For rescue groups like the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, this scene plays out hundreds of times each spring and fall after migrating birds fly into homes, small buildings and sometimes Chicago’s skyscrapers and other hulking buildings.

A stark sign of the risks came last fall, when 1,000 migrating birds died on a single night after flying into the glass exterior of the city’s lakefront convention center, McCormick Place. This fall, the facility unveiled new bird-safe window film on one of its glass buildings along the Lake Michigan shore.

The $1.2 million project installed tiny dots on the exterior of the Lakeside Center building, adorning enough glass to cover two football fields.

Doug Stotz, senior conservation ecologist at the nearby Field Museum, hopes the project will be a success. He estimated that just 20 birds have died after flying into the convention’s center’s glass exterior so far this fall, a hopeful sign.

“We don’t have a lot of data since this just started this fall, but at this point, it looks like it’s made a huge difference,” Stotz said.

But for the birds that collide with Chicago buildings, there is a network of people waiting to help. They also are aiming to educate officials and find solutions to improve building design, lighting and other factors in the massive number of bird collision deaths in Chicago and worldwide.

Prince said she and other volunteers walk the streets downtown to document what they can of the birds that are killed and injured.

“We have the combination of the millions of birds that pass through this area because it’s a major migratory path through the United States, on top of the amount of artificial lighting that we put out at night, which is when these birds are traveling and getting confused and attracted to the amount of glass,” Prince said.

Dead birds are often saved for scientific use, including by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Rescued birds are taken to local wildlife rehabilitation centers to recover, such as the DuPage Wildlife Conservation Center in suburban Illinois.

On a recent morning, veterinarian Darcy Stephenson at DuPage gave a yellow-bellied sapsucker anesthetic gas before taping its wings open for an X-ray. The bird arrived with a note from a rescue group: “Window collision.”

Examining the results, she found the bird had a broken ulna—a bone in the wing.

The center takes in about 10,000 species of animals annually and 65% of them are avian. Many are victims of window collisions and during peak migration in the fall, several hundred birds can show up in one day.

“The large chunk of these birds do actually survive and make it back into the wild once we’re able to treat them,” said Sarah Reich, head veterinarian at DuPage. “Fractures heal very, very quickly in these guys for shoulder fractures. Soft tissue trauma generally heals pretty well. The challenging cases are going to be the ones where the trauma isn’t as apparent.”

Injured birds go through a process of flight testing, then get a full physical exam by the veterinary staff and are rehabilitated before being set free.

“It’s exciting to be able to get these guys back out into the wild, especially some of those cases that we’re kind of cautiously optimistic about or maybe have an injury that we’ve never treated successfully before,” Reich said, adding that these are the cases “clinic staff get really, really excited about.”

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