Our research interest involves understanding how gray wolves (Canis lupus) use their gaze to communicate. Wolves have facial color patterns that make their gaze direction easily identifiable. Although wolves show various body color variation, they all have eyes with a bright yellow iris. To the human eye, their gaze seems very sharp and impressive. Through our research comparing facial color patterns and behavior in Canidae (dog family), we suggest that facial color patterns are related to gaze communication and that gray wolves communicate with one another via gaze signal.

As dogs are domesticated wolves, they share the ability of gaze communication and can understand other dogs’ as well as human gaze signals. Our study can be helpful not only in understanding the behavior of wolves but also domestic dogs, the most popular companion animals.