Can my dog’s brown eyes turn green?

People with multiple dogs in the household may have experienced doggy jealousy.

Yes! Dogs do get jealous according to this 2008 Time article that references a Dec. 10 study published in the American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When a pair of dogs were asked to perform an action but only one dog was rewarded, the unrewarded dog could possibly feel emotion that screams “Not Fair”.

To reveal Fido’s green-eyed monster, Range and three other scientists at the University of Vienna put together pairs of domestic dogs, each accompanied by an experimenter. Both dogs in each pair were given commands to place their paws in the experimenter’s hands, and when they obeyed, they were given a reward — a piece of bread or sausage. But when one dog wasn’t given a reward for obeying, and the other dog in the room was, the unrewarded dog would refuse to respond to the repeated commands. The scientists measured the dogs’ responses by how many times they had to prompt the unrewarded dog before it obeyed.

The dogs’ reactions to the unfair distribution of rewards is called “inequity aversion” — when an animal acts to stop perceived inequalities within its social group — and it’s a defining characteristic of social, or cooperative, species. “They wanted the same reward for the same work,” says Paul Morris, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Portsmouth who specializes in animal behavior. Morris is quick to explain that the study’s results aren’t anthropomorphic: “I’m not saying that dog jealousy is precisely like human jealousy.” Instead, he says, the dogs likely experienced a primitive form of envy. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1865847,00.html#ixzz2U82fJyQZ

We are not a multiple dog household. (In fact, the Housing Development Board (HDB) rules does not allow more than one dog per household.) But sometimes, I wonder if our dog gets jealous, for example when I feel too hungry and decide to feed myself first before I feed her. Does she think “not fair”? I do know that she does come right up to the table and produce lots of sniff, sniff, sniff, sniffing before she snorts her disgust at my ignoring her and concentrating on my food. Then she turns and plonks herself on the floor, her back facing me almost as if she was mortally insulted. (Ok, that’s probably me attributing imaginary emotions to her :P)

Anyway, here’s a green water lily pond since I can’t show you Donna’s eyes turning green. Not just yet.

Note: Dogs’ eye can flash green in the dark when they reflect light.