AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
You know the old trope - pets and their owners, if they're together long enough, start to act and look alike. We've had movies...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "101 DALMATIANS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) The most beautiful creature on four legs.
RASCOE: ...And many, many social media posts.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Owners, their faces. They look exactly the same. With the sunglasses, this is perfect. You see it.
RASCOE: Now we have the science.
YANA BENDER: Indeed, we found that dogs and owners do look alike, and that they also are similar in terms of their personality.
RASCOE: Yana Bender is a Ph.D. researcher at the DogStudies Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. She led a review of 15 different studies on this phenomenon. She says that people looking for a pet will often pick dogs that look like them.
BENDER: Women who have long hair, they actually prefer dogs with long ears. And that women who have short hair or who usually wear their hair tied back, they prefer dogs with short ears, as well.
RASCOE: When it comes to personality, that syncing up tends to happen later on after dog and owner have lived together for a while.
BENDER: A lot of people think that breed characteristics have a really great impact on how the dog will behave later on, but we know now that this is really overestimated.
RASCOE: Often, dog personalities mirror their owners over time. So when you have a relaxed owner, you have a relaxed dog. And if the dog parents are freaked out...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BEST IN SHOW")
MICHAEL HITCHCOCK: (As Hamilton Swan) Where in the crate? It's not in here. It's not in here.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) It should be in the crate.
HITCHCOCK: (As Hamilton Swan) It's not in the crate. I just told you that.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) God, Hamilton, if she doesn't get her toy, she's going to flip out.
RASCOE: ...Then the dogs likely will be, as well. Bender says the research isn't just for fun. It has practical implications.
BENDER: So what we're working on right now is to analyze whether this apparent similarity that exists in dogs and owners is actually good. If that actually means that dogs and owners are more functional, have less behavioral problems together, are more happy, more satisfied with their relationship.
RASCOE: The goal is to eventually help make better matches between owner and dog, like Tinder for pets, powered by science.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE CB3'S "BUNNY HOP") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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