History of FACS

Since the original version was created for use with humans (Ekman and Friesen, 1978; Ekman et al., 2002) FACS has been successfully adapted for several other species, such as chimpanzees (Vick et al., 2007), macaques, (Parr et al., 2010) and gibbons (Waller et al., 2012). See publications page for details.

DogFACS is not an ethogram of dog facial expressions and does not detect emotions per se. Instead, the system allows the user to code the unitary facial movements of dogs in detail, with no a priori assumptions about what represents a facial expression in this species. Since the coding is based on individual muscle movements and not on the perception of a composed facial expression, it avoids any emotional context biases.