(Photo: DogStar Life)
As previously noted, animal behaviorists have deteremined that the direction of a dog's tail wag indicates emotional mood. This discovery led Yannis Tsampalis and his colleagues to create TailTalk--a device that will read those tail movements and report them to humans. They've founded a company called DogStar Life to develop and market this product. Yahoo News reports:
TailTalk transmits the emotional data to a companion app for iOS and Android via Bluetooth. Ideally, the information will enable owners to emphasize the environments, people, toys and so forth that bring their pets the most happiness, while avoiding stress inducers. […]
“If you know that your dog is really unhappy during the day, it’s probably in the best interest of both of you to have a dog walker or dog sitter come over,” he suggested. “We feel that pet parents are wonderful, but if they had more data, they can probably make better decisions and create a stronger bond between them and their dog.”
-via Marginal Revolution