A comparison between wolves, Canis lupus, and dogs, Canis familiaris, in showing behaviour towards humans

Abstract

Both human and nonhuman primates use imperative pointing to request a desired object from another individual. Gaze alternation often accompanies such pointing gestures, and in species that have no hands this can in itself function as imperative pointing. Dogs have exceptional skills in communicating with humans. The early development of these skills is suggested to have been facilitated by domestication. Adult wolves socialized with humans can use human-provided information to find food in various situations, but it is unclear whether they would use gaze alternation to show their human partner a target location they cannot reach on their own. In our experiment, we tested wolves and dogs in a task where they could indicate an out-of-reach food location to one of two human partners. One partner reacted in a cooperative way and gave the food hidden in the indicated location to the subject whereas the other responded in a competitive way and ate the food herself. Our results suggest that wolves, as well as dogs, use ‘showing’ behaviours to indicate a food location to a human partner, and that both can adjust their communication to the cooperativeness of their human partners, showing more indicating signals in the presence of the cooperative partner than in the presence of the competitive one. We conclude that wolves and dogs, both kept in packs under the same conditions, can use humans as cooperative partners, and point imperatively in order to receive a desired out-of-reach object. It seems that intensive socialization with humans enables both wolves and dogs to communicate cooperatively about a food location with humans, most probably relying on skills that evolved to promote social coordination within their packs.

Determination of the Physical and Chemical Properties of the Complex Latosol Soil, Mediterranean, Alluvial and Its Inhibitory Effect on Dog Saliva Bacteria

“…Dogs are one of the animals that are often used as pets by humans. Dogs are the first animals to be tamed and have been lived with humans for more than 10,000 years [1]. In addition, dogs have extraordinary ability to communicate with humans so the role of dogs is still badly needed, such as used as a house guard dog and livestock as well as animals hunter.…”

Differences in persistence between dogs and wolves in an unsolvable task in the absence of humans

“…Hence, dogs might expect humans to solve problems for them and thus turn to humans 75 for help without trying very hard to solve problems by themselves. However, differences in problem-76 solving success are visible even in dogs and wolves that have identical experience with humans 77 (Gácsi et al, 2009;Virányi & Range, 2011;Range & Virányi, 2014; Marshall-Pescini, Virányi & 78 Range, 2015;Marshall-Pescini et al, 2016, 2017cHeberlein et al, 2016;Rao et al, 2017). The 79 second, likelier hypothesis that may explain differences in dogs' and wolves' problem-solving 80 4 performance, is that adaptations to their respective feeding ecologies (Fleming et al, 2017) have 81 resulted in dogs and wolves evolving differences in their correlates of problem-solving success, 82 particularly in persistence.…”

Differences in persistence between dogs and wolves in an unsolvable task in the absence of humans

“…Performing multiple 50 problem-solving experiments over time can help understand consistency in animals' performance and 51 hence, the effect behavioural types have on the correlates of problem-solving success. 52 Dogs and their closest living ancestors, wolves (Frantz et al, 2016) differ strongly in their problem 53 solving success in various paradigms (Frank & Frank, 1982;Frank et al, 1989;Miklósi et al, 2003; 54 Udell, Dorey & Wynne, 2008;Hiestand, 2011;Range & Virányi, 2014; Marshall-Pescini, Virányi & 55 Range, 2015;Udell, 2015;Heberlein et al, 2016;Rao et al, 2017;Brubaker et al, 2017; Marshall-56 Pescini et al, 2017a,b). For instance, wolves were more task-focussed, showed more motor diversity, 57 were more persistent and were able to generalise better than dogs in a string-pulling task (Hiestand, 58 2011).…”