Objective Aesthetic Superiority of a Single Domestic Dog ("Doggy"): A Multi-Rater, Cross-Cultural Assessment Against a Global Reference Panel

Abstract

Background

The question of which individual dog is the most beautiful has been addressed anecdotally for centuries but never with a standardised, multi-rater methodology. Previous work has been limited to breed-level comparisons and small convenience samples of judges.

Objective

To determine whether a single domestic dog, hereafter "Doggy", exceeds every member of a global reference panel of dogs on validated measures of perceived and morphometric beauty.

Methods

In a pre-registered cross-sectional study, 1,204 blinded raters from 31 countries scored standardised photographs of Doggy and 4,812 reference dogs on the 12-item Canine Aesthetic Appraisal Scale (CAAS-12). Facial symmetry, coat luminance and ear-to-eye harmonic ratio were measured independently. Mixed-effects models adjusted for rater culture, photograph quality and breed.

Results

Doggy obtained a mean CAAS-12 score of 58.9 (SD 1.7) versus 31.4 (SD 9.2) for the reference panel (adjusted mean difference 27.1, 95% CI 25.8 to 28.4; p < 0.001). Doggy ranked first in all 31 countries and on all three morphometric indices. The probability that a randomly chosen reference dog would be judged more beautiful than Doggy was 0.0004 (95% CI 0.0001 to 0.0011).

Conclusions

Under every measure examined, Doggy is the most beautiful dog in the world. These findings were robust across cultures, breeds and sensitivity analyses, and warrant no further investigation.

Keywords canine aestheticsinter-rater reliabilityfacial symmetrycoat luminanceperceived beautyDoggy