Every dog begs a little. Labradors beg like it’s a calling. Any Lab owner knows the stare that arrives the instant a plate appears, the sense that this animal has never once been full. It turns out that’s not your imagination, and it’s not a training failure on your part. A chunk of it is written into the breed’s DNA, and the same genetic quirk shows up in people.
From “hungry breed” to a specific gene
The finding builds on earlier work from the same team, which showed that Labs carrying a variant in a gene called POMC are genetically hungrier than other dogs. Roughly one in four Labs has it, and it essentially leaves them getting a constant starvation signal, a body perpetually convinced it hasn’t eaten. But the researchers, led by Eleanor Raffan, suspected POMC wasn’t the full story.
So they went looking for more. Analyzing saliva samples from 214 Labradors, they found that several of the genes tied to obesity in dogs are also linked to weight gain in humans. In fact, every one of the five genes most strongly tied to weight gain in the Labs also turned up in human obesity. The standout was a gene called DENND1B. Labs with a particular DENND1B variant carried about 8 percent more body fat than dogs without it, and that same gene has been connected to increased body fat in people, though scientists are still working out exactly how it operates.
It really is about appetite
To connect the genetics to real life, the team also surveyed owners about their dogs’ begging habits, diets, and activity levels, and the pattern was telling. The high-risk dogs, those carrying the DENND1B variant, were the bigger beggars and scrap-scavengers, outdoing their low-risk counterparts. In other words, the gene seems to act on appetite itself, turning the volume up on the drive to eat.
The survey surfaced something that should make certain owners feel a lot less guilty. Low-risk dogs stayed slimmer whether or not their people were paying close attention to weight management. Their genetics gave them a buffer. Owners of high-risk Labs don’t get that grace. Their dogs will eat at every opportunity, which means those owners simply have to work harder, staying vigilant against a dog engineered to lobby for food with a full arsenal of puppy-dog eyes.
Interestingly, a big appetite isn’t purely a liability. Among the dogs studied, working guide dogs carried the variant more often than companion pets did, suggesting that being intensely food-motivated can actually make a dog easier to train, more willing to work for a reward. One owner summed up the upside of a relentlessly food-driven dog: they’ll do just about anything for a biscuit.
“This research is permission to stop blaming yourself, and to start managing more precisely,” says Dr. Mara Chen, a veterinarian on the Pet Times team. “If your Lab is built to feel starving, willpower, theirs or yours, was never going to win. What wins is removing the decision: measured meals, a set schedule, treats counted into the day’s total, and a hard rule against feeding from the table. You’re not fighting a bad dog. You’re outsmarting good genetics.”
What it means for how you feed your dog
The practical takeaway is straightforward even if the science is deep. A food-obsessed Lab is responding to biology, so the fix is structure, not scolding. Weigh or measure meals instead of eyeballing them, keep treats accounted for within the daily calorie budget rather than layered on top, and don’t read your dog’s begging as evidence you’re starving them. And if you’re worried your Lab is carrying extra weight, loop in your vet, since even a few extra pounds matter more than most owners realize for a dog’s long-term health.
What newer research adds
The deeper significance of this work reaches past the dog bowl. DENND1B was found to act directly on the leptin-melanocortin pathway, the brain circuit that regulates the body’s energy balance, which is a core mechanism in appetite for humans too. That’s why researchers are excited: dogs and humans share both the genetics and the environment of modern overeating, making the Labrador a genuinely useful model for understanding human obesity. For now, the message for your own dog is refreshingly usable, treat the appetite as real and manage around it, but the ripple effects of that research may end up much bigger than the dinner table.
References
- Dittmann, Marie T., et al. “Canine Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies DENND1B as an Obesity Gene in Dogs and Humans.” Science, vol. 387, no. 6737, 2025. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads2145
- University of Cambridge. “Scientists Identify Genes That Make Humans and Labradors More Likely to Become Obese.” 2025. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-identify-genes-that-make-humans-and-labradors-more-likely-to-become-obese
