Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus) and dogs (Canis familiaris)

Abstract

Dogs have a remarkable skill to use humangiven cues in object-choice tasks, but little is known to what extent their closest wild-living relative, the wolf can achieve this performance. In Study 1, we compared wolf and dog pups hand-reared individually and pet dogs of the same age in their readiness to form eye-contact with a human experimenter in an object-choice task and to follow her pointing gesture. The results showed that dogs already at 4 months of age use momentary distal pointing to Wnd hidden food even without intensive early socialization. Wolf pups, on the contrary, do not attend to this subtle pointing. Accordingly in Studies 2 and 3, these wolves were tested longitudinally with this and four other (easier) human-given cues. This revealed that wolves socialized at a comparable level to dogs are able to use simple humangiven cues spontaneously if the human's hand is close to the baited container (e.g. touching, proximal pointing). Study 4 showed that wolves can follow also momentary distal pointing similarly to dogs if they have received extensive formal training. Comparing the wolves to naïve pet dogs of the same age revealed that during several months of formal training wolves can reach the level of dogs in their success of following momentary distal pointing in parallel with improving their readiness to form eyecontact with a human experimenter. We assume that the high variability in the wolves' communicative behaviour might have provided a basis for selection during the course of domestication of the dog.

The domestication hypothesis for dogs' skills with human communication: a response to Udell et al. (2008) and Wynne et al. (2008)

“…Udell et al (2008) examined the use of a pointing cue by five experimental groups of canids (one group of wolves, four groups of dogs), each with eight subjects of adult age. Unlike and Viranyi et al (2008), none of the subjects were reared for the purposes of the experiment, so the authors could not be sure of the subjects' previous relevant experiences. This raises the question of how much previous experience the wolves had with performing human-directed tasks; this is particularly important given that these wolves had been used in public education shows and had been intensively exposed to humans.…”

“…This conclusion holds even for wolves reared in identical conditions with a group of dogs for the purpose of comparing their social skills with humans. In summary, it is unlikely that dogs simply inherited their unusual skills from their last common ancestor with wolves (Viranyi et al 2008).…”

“…Even puppies as young as 6-9 weeks of age can use a human's communicative cues, including unadopted puppies still living with their littermates and having little exposure to humans beyond routine care (Hare et al 2002;Riedel et al 2008;Viranyi et al 2008). This suggests that dogs' use of human communicative cues does not require extensive exposure to humans (e.g.…”

“…Although wolves can potentially learn to use human communicative cues (much like nonhuman primates), they do not show these skills as young puppies and must be explicitly trained to express dog-like skills in response to human communicative cues (Agnetta et al 2000;Hare et al 2002;Viranyi et al 2008). This conclusion holds even for wolves reared in identical conditions with a group of dogs for the purpose of comparing their social skills with humans.…”

Wolves do not join the dance: Sophisticated aggression control by adjusting to human social signals in dogs

“…Such studies have already revealed some crucial differences in the human related social behaviours of the two species. For example, compared to wolf pups, dog puppies' more intense social interest towards humans is accompanied by relatively greater sensitivity to human behavioural cues (Miklósi et al, 2003;Virányi et al, 2008) and less aggression during non-competitive inter-specific interactions 2009). Moreover, in contrast to dogs, wolves do not show human analogue attachment behaviour to their owners .…”