Do dogs know whether we are male or female?

Yes, dogs can figure out the gender of their people. They do this, like they do most things, with their noses. As an example of this, my family adopted a dog when I was a kid. He had been horribly mistreated by the women he used to live with. read more

My dog has always made a bigger fuss of male visitors than female. The Rescue centre told us she liked men when we brought her home. read more

While there do not appear to be gender differences in owner attachment levels towards dogs (Prato-Previde et al., 2005), male and female owners do differ in their interaction style with dogs, as men speak to their dogs less frequently (Prato-Previde et al., 2005) and are less likely to perceive their dog as being stressed (Mariti et al., 2012). read more

In particular, they wanted to see if dogs categorized people by male and female, by using the two main cues we attend to: visual appearance and voice. To test this, dogs were sat opposite a speaker, on either side of which stood a man and a woman. read more