A 2025 experiment found that dogs blinked more while watching a video of another dog blinking than while watching a dog nose-lick. The result suggests that dogs may mimic one another’s blinks, and that blinking could play a part in canine communication—but it does not show what a blink means or prove that dogs deliberately blink to send a message.
What the study found
In an experiment published in Royal Society Open Science on February 19, 2025, researchers observed 54 domestic dogs as they watched videos of other dogs displaying one of three expressions: blinking, nose-licking, or attentive stillness. The dogs blinked more during the blink video than during the nose-lick video. The study’s authors say that pattern suggests a possible mimicry phenomenon and a potential communicative role for blinking.
The finding is a difference in the dogs’ responses to filmed cues. It does not, by itself, establish why they blinked more or what a blink might convey in a real dog-to-dog encounter. PubMed’s record for the study lists it as a 2025 article in volume 12, issue 2, of the journal.
What “blinking to communicate” does—and does not—mean
Possible mimicry, not proven synchronization
Seeing more blinking in response to a blink video is consistent with dogs responding to or mimicking another dog’s visual signal. But the experiment did not directly test whether dogs synchronize their blinks with another dog’s timing. The authors explicitly identify blink synchronization as a question for future work.
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No specific meaning was decoded
The researchers did not establish that a dog’s blink means friendliness, trust, appeasement, or affection. Nor did they show that dogs intentionally blink to send any particular message. The study measured blinking rates after dogs watched different filmed expressions; it did not decode a signal in a natural interaction.
How to read the heart-rate result
The researchers also reported increased heart-rate variability during the video sessions across the facial-signal conditions. They interpreted this response as suggesting that the stimuli were not stressful for the dogs in the experiment. That interpretation applies to those study sessions; it does not establish how every dog responds to videos or to another dog’s signals in other settings.
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What the finding means for dog owners
This study offers an intriguing clue about how dogs may respond to one another’s facial cues, but it is not a guide to interpreting an individual blink. A blink alone should not be treated as a validated signal of reassurance or as proof of a particular emotion. The result supports further study of canine visual communication, especially whether blinking affects real social interactions between dogs.
The paper, “If you blink at me, I’ll blink back. Domestic dogs’ feedback to conspecific visual cues,” is available in full through PubMed Central.
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