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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

Why Dogs Hump People, Other Dogs, and Basically Anything Nearby

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Every dog owner has been there: at the dog park, on the guest’s leg, on the couch cushion. It’s awkward for the humans. The dog couldn’t care less.

Dog humping is one of those behaviors that people instinctively try to shut down without ever stopping to ask why it’s happening, which means they’re usually addressing the wrong thing entirely. According to Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado and a longtime ethologist, humping is a natural dog behavior, and the context matters enormously. Who’s doing it, who’s on the receiving end, where they are, what just happened before it started—all of that changes what the behavior actually means.

Bekoff and a group of citizen scientists collected data on 312 mounting-and-humping encounters across roughly 40 dogs at local dog parks. What they........

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