With their flattened noses and wrinkled faces, pugs and French bulldogs have become favorites among dog lovers and celebrities.
These facial features may look cute, but they also put these breeds at significantly higher risk for serious health problems, including respiratory, eye, and skin disorders.
Despite this, flat-faced dogs, also known as brachycephalic dogs, remain some of the most popular breeds in the UK.
Now, scientists think they have discovered why, and they say it’s all down to their childlike faces and personalities.
“In brachycephalic breeds, infantile traits can be present not only in appearance but also in behavior, causing affectionate behavior in their owners,” explained the team from Eötvös Loránd University.
With their flattened noses and wrinkled faces, pugs and French bulldogs have become favorites among dog lovers and celebrities.
The team recruited 30 flat-faced dogs (15 English Bulldogs and 15 French Bulldogs) as well as 13 Hungarian Mudis (which have medium-length snouts) for comparison. The dogs were given a task in which they had to try to open three boxes to retrieve a piece of sausage.
Popular flat-faced dog breeds include French bulldogs, English bulldogs, Boston terriers, pugs, Cavalier King Charles spaniels, shih tzus, and boxers.
Its short-faced ‘brachycephalic’ characteristics did not evolve naturally, but are the result of selective breeding.
They are very popular in the United Kingdom, and the Kennel Club reported a 2,747 percent increase in the number of French bulldogs registered since 2004.
For the study, the researchers wanted to explain the so-called “brachycephalic paradox”: why the popularity of flat-faced dogs is constantly increasing despite their welfare problems, high veterinary costs and short life expectancy.
The team recruited 30 flat-faced dogs (15 English Bulldogs and 15 French Bulldogs) as well as 13 Hungarian Mudis (which have medium-length snouts) for comparison.
Pugs are much more likely to suffer from respiratory, eye and skin disorders than other breeds, according to vets at the Royal Veterinary College.
Gerard Butler (left), Paris Hilton (right) and YouTuber Zoe Sugg are just some of the famous faces who have shared their lives with pugs.
The dogs were given the task of trying to open three boxes to retrieve a piece of sausage.
The boxes had different opening mechanisms of different difficulties and were presented to the dogs in random order.
The dogs watched an experimenter place the sausage in the box and were then given two minutes to try to open it.
During this time, both the experimenter and the dog owner remained behind the dog, out of direct sight.
The results revealed that the Mudis were much better at the task than the flat-faced breeds, successfully opening the box 93 percent more often and doing so much faster.
However, the flat-faced dogs were almost 4.5 times more likely to look at the experimenter and the owner than the Mudis.
According to the researchers, this suggests that short-faced dogs tend to seek human help when faced with problems.
In turn, this may promote a stronger social relationship between owners and these dog breeds due to their perceived helplessness.
“Humans find it very difficult to cognitively override strong instinctual predispositions and continue to choose brachycephalic breeds, without taking into account future health and well-being issues,” the team added.
The study comes shortly after RVC researchers compared the risks of 40 common conditions in pugs with other dog breeds.
The team analyzed records of 16,218 pugs and 889,326 non-pug breeds, taken from the VetCompass database.
Their analysis revealed that pugs were at increased risk for 23 of 40 common disorders.
The pugs were 54 times more likely to have brachycephalic airway obstruction syndrome (a condition that affects the upper airways) and 51 times more likely to have narrow nasal passages.
The breed was also 13 times more likely to suffer from corneal ulceration, 2.5 times more likely to suffer from obesity and twice as likely to have overgrown nails.
Dr Dan O’Neill, lead author of the paper and associate professor of companion animal epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College, said at the time: “As humans, we have the power to ensure that every dog starts life with a good natural health.
“When choosing which dog to own, this means selecting a breed that does not have extreme conformations, such as folded skin, that can lead to a lifetime of painful skin infections.
“It is vital that people make informed decisions about purchasing puppies and avoid those dogs bred to have extreme wrinkles (which are far removed from what is described in the breed standards) and instead ‘stop and think,'” and find a responsible breeder, who has the dogs’ well-being at heart.”
