• The Behavioural Biology with You - for You is a six-part popular science video series presenting the methodology of ethological research and the main research groups at the Department of Ethology, ELTE, Budapest.

• The Behavioural Biology with You - for You is a six-part popular science video series presenting the methodology of ethological research and the main research groups at the Department of Ethology, ELTE, Budapest.

• Teaser of Dogs Decoded (NOVA).

• Presentation at the Dog Etholog Conference, 2022.

• Wolfwatching tells the story of a unique comparative ethological experiment in which wolves and dogs were brought up by humans. The extensive research program at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University led to some surprising results. Thanks to the dedicated work of ethologists and wolf stepmothers, we start to understand the way how the canine mind works. Interviews with Professors Ádám Miklósi and Vilmos Csányi.

• Our project aimed to explore the cognitive ageing of family dogs using an interdisciplinary approach with behavioural, neuroscientific, and genetic testing methods. Our goal was twofold: to enhance translational research on cognitive ageing and increase canine welfare. We characterised the canine ageing phenotype with cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations and identified age-related biomarkers.

• Canine Cognitive Battery

• In a study published in Scientific Reports, researchers at the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Hungary (http://etologia.elte.hu/en/home-2/) found that dog brains, just as human brains, process speech hierarchically: intonation at lower, word meaning at higher stages. The study reveals exciting speech-processing similarities between us and a speechless species.

• Research identified gene variants unique to two Methuselah dogs (aged 22 and 27 years) which could not be found in 850 dogs of average age. The genome of the oldest old “Methuselahs” is enriched with gene variants that can elongate lifespan. Original paper: Jónás, D., Sándor, S., Tátrai K., Egyed, B., Kubinyi, E. (2020) A preliminary study to investigate the genetic background of longevity based on whole-genome sequence data of two Methuselah dogs. Frontiers in Genetics, 11:315. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00315.

• Video for the paper of Kubinyi, E & Iotchev BI (2020) Animals, 10(7), 1222; https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/7/1222 Over the last few years, several efforts have been undertaken to characterize the aging process in dogs. In the present study, we evaluate a short protocol measuring dogs’ cognitive, social, and physical capacities. Our aim was to develop a feasible test battery, with minimal pre-training requirements, no complex devices, and which is set outdoors (i.e., a specific testing room is not needed). As ageing in dogs is usually associated with a decrease in activity, we also assessed the personality trait activity/excitability with a dog personality questionnaire. Four subtests proved sensitive to the dogs’ age. In particular, old dogs displayed less approaching and following behaviors toward an unknown but friendly human, showed both less avoidance and interest toward a novel object, looked less at the owner when faced with an unsolvable problem, and performed worse on the short-term memory task. Previous test procedures for investigating age-related changes involve expensive and/or complicated devices and extensive pre-training. The main advantage of the proposed battery is to reduce costs and efforts in veterinary assessments. Further tests in same-breed, large samples and between dogs with mild and severe cognitive impairments will be needed in order to further validate the battery. Kubinyi, E.; Iotchev, I.B. A Preliminary Study toward a Rapid Assessment of Age-Related Behavioral Differences in Family Dogs. Animals 2020, 10, 1222. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/7/1222 https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10071222

• High fast seep spindle frequency in dogs is characteristic of both aging and learning performance decline according to new research on pet dogs. In the brain, less is sometimes more. As far as rhythmic activity is concerned, higher frequencies (i.e. more waves/second) are often alarming. In populations of dopaminergic cells, for example, they appear as a compensatory response when cell-death is prevalent. With regard to sleep spindles – brief patterns observed in EEG recordings of the sleeping brain, higher instantaneous frequencies have been shown to foreshadow dementia. In a new study released in Scientific Reports by researchers from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, a direct association between spindling frequency and cognitive decline was demonstrated for the first time in dogs. “We had already confirmed, that in dogs, like humans, older individuals display spindles with on average higher intrinsic frequencies,” noted Dr. Enikő Kubinyi, group leader of the Senior Family Dog Project, focusing on cognitive aging in dogs, “as yet, it remained an open question which age-related changes in spindling are also biomarkers of cognitive aging.” “We compared behavioral data from two types of learning task with spindle activity obtained from the same animals’ EEG recordings. We tested the memory and the learning performance of 58 family dogs, who also slept in a sleeping laboratory a few weeks later, while their brain activity was recorded with EEG.” explained Dóra Szabó which had been developing and comparing different paradigms for testing old dogs’ learning abilities, “behavior and EEG were measured twice, with at least 3 months distance between the first and second measurement of each, allowing us to make two types of comparison. Firstly, we were able to test if relatively close in time measures of spindle activity and learning performance correlate, and secondly, if changes in behavior from the first to the second measurement are mirrored by changes in spindling.” Ivaylo Iotchev, who had developed a spindle detection algorithm for dogs in 2017 was partly surprised by the results “that spindle frequency increases with age was long known and at least one study revealed a connection with dementia in humans, but this is not as well replicated as the aging-associated decline in spindle amplitude and occurrence.” As yet, the authors found that frequency was the only factor to predict the dogs’ performance on a reversal-learning task, both when task performance and spindle frequency were compared directly and when changes between the first and second measurement of each variable were compared. Dr. Anna Kis, one of the founding mothers of non-invasive dog EEG studies in Budapest, elaborates “Spindle occurrence is usually compared with memory performance on the same day, thus we are not as surprised that spindle counts showed no association with behavior in our set-up. Spindle frequency can also be expected to be more stable across longer periods of time, because unlike spindle occurrence, it is not affected by exposure to novel information, i.e. day to day experience.” The authors did raise some notes of caution, too. “The associations between frequency and reversal learning differed significantly between two versions of this task, which might have been caused by differences in difficulty between the two conditions. This raises the need for further exploration,” stated Dr. Kubinyi. “As yet, we are excited to report the first to our knowledge cross-species replication concerning a spindle-derived marker of cognitive aging. High spindle frequency, associated with dementia onset risk in humans has now been shown to correlate with worse reversal learning in the dog. While in each species replications will be needed to solidify this effect, this is exciting in light of dogs’ importance as translational models for human aging.” Reference: Iotchev, I.B., Szabó, D., Kis, A., Kubinyi E. Possible association between spindle frequency and reversal-learning in aged family dogs. Sci Rep 10, 6505 (2020).

• How does a group of family dogs decide the direction of their collective movements? Is there a leader, or is decision-making based on an egalitarian system? Is leadership related to social dominance status? We collected GPS trajectory data from an owner and her six dogs during several walks. We found that dogs adjusted their trajectories to that of the owner, that they periodically run away, then turn back and return to her in a loop. Tracks have unique features characterising individual dogs. Leading roles among the dogs are frequently interchanged, but leadership is consistent on a long timescale. Decisions about running away and turning back to the owner are not based on an egalitarian system; instead, leader dogs exert a disproportionate influence on the movement of the group. Leadership during walks is related to the dominance rank assessed in everyday agonistic situations; thus, the collective motion of a dog group is influenced by the underlying hierarchical social network. Leader/dominant dogs have a unique personality: they are more trainable, controllable, and aggressive, additionally they are older than follower/subordinate dogs. Dogs are an ideal model for understanding human social behaviour. Therefore, we address the possibility of conducting similar studies in humans, e.g. walking with children and detecting interactions between individuals. Paper: http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

• Bognár Zs., Iotchev I., Kubinyi E. (2018) Sex, Skull Length, Breed, and Age Predict How Dogs Look at Faces of Humans and Conspecifics. Animal Cognition doi: 10.1007/s10071-018-1180-4 European Research Council (ERC 680040)

• DNA collection and cognitive tests on a Methuselah dog living in Hungary. This dog died at the age of 27. Scientific paper about the genome of this dog: Jónás, D., Sándor, S., Tátrai K., Egyed, B., Kubinyi, E. (2020) A preliminary study to investigate the genetic background of longevity based on whole-genome sequence data of two Methuselah dogs. Frontiers in Genetics. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00315

• This is the campus of the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, Budapest, Hungary.

• Slideshow about the Hungarian Wolf Project. This is an accompanying film of the 3rd Worldwide Free Seminar of the Family Dog Project. Dogs’ special domestication processes, their natural socialization to humans, and the possibility of tracing evolutionary changes by comparing dogs’ behavior to that of wolves, make dogs altogether unique for studying the evolution of complex social behavior. Earlier studies on socialized wolves’ behavior tested problem solving, learning ability, or intraspecies aggression and did not report on human oriented behavior. In addition, the sample sizes in this work were often low (Fentress, 1967; Frank & Frank, 1982), and wolves and dogs were not socialized to comparable levels (Hare, Brown, Williamson, & Tomasello, 2002). We decided to avoid these insufficiencies. In the years 2001-2003 we (Family Dog Project, Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary) obtained 13, 4 to 6 day-old wolf cubs from 5 litters (6 males and 7 females in all from Zoltán Horkai's farm http://horkai.net/) and 11 dog puppies of similar ages from 5 litters (6 males and 5 females; all mongrels, born in shelters). The unique feature of this program was that each cub and puppy had its own human caretaker, who spent 24 hours a day together with the animal for a period of about 9-16 weeks. Although the animals had the chance to meet conspecifics regularly (at least weekly), they spent most of their time in close contact with the human caretaker. Additionally, every caretaker took special care to avoid competitive situations and aggressive interactions in order to maintain a friendly and trustful relationship with the animal.

• Teaser by Zoltan Torok, Wild Tales Productions http://wildtales.net/ Free seminar online: http://familydogproject.elte.hu/wordp... Dogs’ special domestication processes, their natural socialization to humans, and the possibility of tracing evolutionary changes by comparing dogs’ behavior to that of wolves, make dogs altogether unique for studying the evolution of complex social behavior.

• Canine behaviour tests

• 4 month old hand raised, intensively socialized wolf cub tries to pull out a piece of meat by a string, but the string is attached to the cage (unsolvable problem, test trial). Experiment of Family Dog Project, Dept. of Ethology, Eotvos University, Budapest (2002). Miklosi et al. (2003). A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans, but dogs do. Current Biology, 13, 763-766.

• 4 month old Belgian Groenendael dog puppy tries to pull out a piece of meat by a string, but the string is attached to the cage (unsolvable problem, test trial). Experiment of Family Dog Project, Dept. of Ethology, Eotvos University, Budapest (2002). 4 month old hand raised, intensively socialized wolf cub tries to pull out a piece of meat by a string, but the string is attached to the cage (unsolvable problem, test trial). Experiment of Family Dog Project, Dept. of Ethology, Eotvos University, Budapest (2002). Miklosi et al. (2003). A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans, but dogs do. Current Biology, 13, 763-766.

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