I’m on to you dog, you wrinkled-brow dung weevil. I get what you’re doing. You and your ancestors. Centuries of evolving to this perfectly effective state. Diverging from your cousins, the wolves, thanks to a little muscle in your forehead that gives you super powers. Able to mimic our human emotions, and prey on our generosity and gullible-ness and the fact that we find woodland critters with personality utterly irresistible. Mirror images of us, but like cartoon characters.
And we’re suckers. We’ll give you anything when you pull off that wrinkled-brow cute stuff. Another snack. A spot in our bed. The keys to the car. A place in the will. I once grilled you a steak with graham crackers on top!
But I’m wise now, buddy. I’m on to you.
It’s thanks to new research I read about the other day. Scientists studied the differences between dogs and wolves, and found that man’s best friend has a special muscle along their noggins that allows them to do an “inner eyebrow raise.” Wolves don’t have it, and so they just look like they’re going to eat our faces when they stare at us. But dogs can raise their eyebrows, looking super cute and even human-like … right before they eat our faces off.
Only, they don’t have to eat us. Dogs learned over the centuries that if they employ this muscle – the levator anguli oculi medialis (also known as the sad-puppy-dog-con-artist muscle) – they can get scraps of meat, become part of the family and even scam the password to the family 401K.
Pull off those “puppy dog eyes” and they would have us in the palm of their paws.
It’s a wonderful tool. With it, they can convince us of all manner of things. They wrinkle that brow and we’ll believe anything. “Cat poop? No, I didn’t eat any cat poop. Do I LOOK like I’m capable of eating cat poop?” wrinkle brow, wrinkle brow, wrinkle brow way down … now WINK! “Look closely … aren’t I precious?”
Nah, not you. You’re such a good girl, my pretty little … wait a minute … there’s some of it still hanging out of your mouth!!!
Bamboozled. They know what they’re doing.
I thought my dog got me. I thought she was thoughtful and innocent and sad. Wrinkling her brow was like a sigh: Woe is me! “The only thing in life that can make me feel better is a cookie … and a steak with a graham cracker on top.”
Do dogs do it on purpose? Do they know what they’re doing? Is there a manual and webinars teaching them how to hoodwink us with it? Is it part of a master plan to take over the world?
Part of me wishes I had never read this study. That I still believed my dog was just an innocent soul with a cute personality, incapable of anything as deceptive and duplicitous as an eyebrow raise. Maybe she is. It might not be her fault that she has this power to make me puppy putty. Although, I’d rather be bamboozled by a brow than stared at like I’m going to be dinner. And they sure are cute when they do it … even if I do find the car keys missing right afterward.