New Delhi: A new study found that hungry dogs who haven’t eaten breakfast are more likely to raise false alarms and misidentify smells during detection work. It found a specific trait in hungry dogs: they are motivated to find a scent, but hunger can confuse them.
The study, ‘The breakfast effect revisited: Dogs’ scent detection performance before and after a meal’, was jointly led by researchers from the University of Waikato in New Zealand and Adelaide University in Australia. It was published in two journals, Learning and Motivation and Behavioural Processes.
“The most important finding from the present study is that dogs’ scent-detection performance appears to be optimal following a meal, as we observed significantly higher correct rejection rates but no deleterious effects on hit rates when dogs had a meal prior to working,” states the study.
When a dog is starved, the reward (the treat) becomes immensely powerful. This causes the dog’s brain to lower its standards. Instead of being highly specific and selective, the dog generalises and flags anything that smells remotely like the target because they desperately want the food.
“When dogs had not eaten, they were more likely to respond to non-target smells as though they were the target when they were working for treats”, said associate professor Timothy L Edwards, who led the research.
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Food is important
The researchers trained six dogs and assigned them a task to identify a target mixture of four odours using an automated scent detection system.
The task was completed either before or after their morning meal.
The dogs were able to identify the target scent around 90 per cent in both conditions. But the study argued that the hungry dogs were significantly worse at rejecting non-target smells, resulting in more “false alarms”.
Researchers compared it to searching for lost keys among a bunch, when every small metallic thing looks like keys.
Dr Jade Fountain, co-author of the study, suggested more study to translate the findings into operational settings. However, she also argued that this could help in designing feeding strategies when planning scent detection work.
The study could be relevant in disease detection, explosives and landmine detection or any place where incorrect detection can have serious consequences.
However, several other studies have claimed that dogs that skipped breakfast were most likely to whine and focus on the food dispenser while engaging with the scent detection tasks.
Diet, training, rewards, and working conditions can also influence a dog’s performance.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)