Why Do Dogs Always Want To Lick Our Face?

The initial idea from which we will have to start to know why dogs want to lick our face, is that they recognize our face. Also, dogs have genetic backgrounds in wolves.

In a family of wolves, when the parents go out to hunt, when they return to the ‘house’, the cubs receive their parents greeting them with licks on their muzzles. This reception has a dual purpose: on the one hand, as a rule, it is a greeting and, on the other, it serves so that wolf parents can regurgitate food for their offspring. The cubs demand attention and food for their parents, also licking their muzzles. These attitudes, somehow, were inherited by dogs.

Dogs want to lick our face for several reasons

When our canine pets lick our face it’s a familiar gesture, in the first instance, as it’s a welcome gesture, but it’s also kind of a touch of attention. Also, it is a sign of calm and serenity. What they try to communicate to us is that there are no threats, that everything is fine and that they are prepared to play or interact when the owners want. If we are fighting with the dog or in a physical position that intimidates him or makes him feel insecure, the animal may make attempts to lick our face in order to calm us down and relieve tension.

Another important purpose that dogs aim to lick our face is, directly, to look for information, about where we have been, what we ate, etc. They’ll get all this data from licking us in the face.

Learning is another cause. If the animal is already aware that licking our face makes us laugh, that it makes us feel good, it may just look for that, mutual fun.

types of kisses

Just as there are kisses of many types, demonstrations of love, desire, affection, friendship, more fleeting or longer kisses, dog licks are the human equivalent of a tender kiss or a caress. It is an affectionate way of recognizing us, exploring us and knowing more about us, it is an affectionate demonstration of affection.

Dogs show their affection for people in many ways. One of the most important is through language. It’s not uncommon for dogs to lick our face and even our owner’s ears. From a very young age, our pet learns to “speak” with its tongue, and licking our face is an example of this.

Studies performed

Different researches were developed and contributed with data that confirm the dogs’ reaction to the states of joy or pain of their owners. An animal’s behavior is very much influenced by human expressions that it immediately perceives.

In this way, in the researches developed, when people were happy, the dog approached them with a friendly and playful air. If people were sad or crying, the animal responded with licks on the hands and face, sniffing them softly and caressing them with its body.

In the latter case, the licks served to show all their affection and their “solidarity” in the face of the bad time they sensed people were going through. The interaction, as we see, is total. Nothing that happens to us goes unnoticed by our pet, although most of the time we are not aware of it.

The dog can “sympathize” with us and develop what we can define as “emotional contagion”, that is, come to feel what we feel. In these studies truly surprising information was obtained.

Other studies have shown that dogs are also infected by human yawns. During the surveys, half of the dogs analyzed yawned when they heard the sound of human yawns. Also, if the yawn came from its owner, the probability that the dog would yawn was five times greater.

Although these studies cannot conclude that the empathy of dogs is equal to human, the truth is that our feelings and the expression that is born of them will infect our canine friend, and it is further evidence that the dog is the best friend of man. Licking our face is a clear example of this.