Looks like humans are no longer the only animals to go through a midlife crisis. A recent study on our canine friends has discovered that dogs also go through drastic changes in the way they perceive and approach the world after a certain age, and ouch, that’s ruff.
In a study published by Scientific Reports, dogs will go through a similar personality change to humans, but within a quicker timeframe given their much shorter lives.
After the age of three, some dogs are found to become increasingly more jaded with the world, feeling a lot more bored by new environments and experiences than when they were younger.
The experiment involved tracking the personalities of 200 dogs of the same breed. The team decided to go with Border collies given their natural intelligence, and the researchers were sure to gather a whole variety of ages to make the experiment fair.
Border collies aged 15 years to less than a month were ultimately tested. There was a massive list of things that these furry friends were examined for, but the main things were obedience, how they dealt with separation and isolation, how they dealt with threats, willingness to explore unknown environments depending on age, and willingness to greet strangers depending on age.
The tests were then revisited four years later to see how each dog had changed over the course of time. Naturally, this lead to some pretty fetching discoveries. The dog puns will not stop here.
In the end, there were some pretty interesting discoveries made about the personalities of dogs and how they change over time. The most profound of these findings was the fact that dogs are less interested in brand new things once they hit the age of three, which is also known as a midlife crisis.
Personality changes were detected across every dog at the same time in their lives, and it was also identified that once dogs hit age six they keep the same personality for the rest of their lives, which is pretty interesting.
So yeah, once dogs hit the middle of their lives, they tend to not feel excited about things anymore and stay the same way until their end.
Go pat your furry friend, they’re just like us after all.
