Dogs’ Eavesdropping from People’s Reactions in Third Party Interactions

Abstract

Eavesdropping involves the acquisition of information from third-party interactions, and can serve to indirectly attribute reputation to individuals. There is evidence on eavesdropping in dogs, indicating that they can develop a preference for people based on their cooperativeness towards others. In this study, we tested dogs’ eavesdropping abilities one step further. In a first experiment, dogs could choose between cooperative demonstrators (the donors) who always gave food to an approaching third person (the beggar); here, the only difference between donors was whether they received positive or negative reactions from the beggar (through verbal and gestural means). Results showed that dogs preferentially approached the donor who had received positive reactions from the beggar. By contrast, two different conditions showed that neither the beggar’s body gestures nor the verbal component of the interaction on their own were sufficient to affect the dogs’ preferences. We also ran two further experiments to test for the possibility of dogs’ choices being driven by local enhancement. When the donors switched places before the choice, dogs chose at random. Similarly, in a nonsocial condition in which donors were replaced by platforms, subjects chose at chance levels. We conclude that dogs’ nonrandom choices in the present protocol relied on the simultaneous presence of multiple cues, such as the place where donors stood and several features of the beggar’s behavior (gestural and verbal reactions, and eating behavior). Nonetheless, we did not find conclusive evidence that dogs discriminated the donors by their physical features, which is a prerequisite of reputation attribution.

The Origin of Social Evaluation, Social Eavesdropping, Reputation Formation, Image Scoring or What You Will

“…Marshall-Pescini et al (2011), Freidin et al (2013), and Nitzschner et al (2014) used a similar food sharing situation as described for non-human primates. Although the results of the experiment by Marshall-Pescini et al (2011) showed that dogs prefer the prosocial human partner over the antisocial partner, the latter two studies suggested that dogs’ choice was influenced by the location of the human (in the test situation) rather than the identity and behavior.…”

Why do adult dogs ‘play’?

“…Play is not unique in this respect: playful interactions appear to be just one of several different contexts in which dogs can observe and assess other dogs' behavioural traits and strategies (e.g. Kundey et al, 2011;Marshall-Peschini et al, 2011), although precisely what information dogs extract from observing such third-party interactions is still unclear (Freidin et al, 2013).…”

Do dogs eavesdrop on human interactions in a helping situation?

“…Conversely, dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) descend from wolves (Canis lupus), which live in family groups and engage in group hunting and alloparenting [10], thus they are highly social and cooperative. Furthermore, dogs were domesticated by humans-they can cooperate with humans and rely on them for valuable resources [11], such as food and shelter. Thus, it would be beneficial for dogs to observe humans interacting with each other or with other dogs and gain information from such an exchange to select the most appropriate person with whom to associate and whom to avoid.…”

“…This was not controlled for in Marshall-Pescini, Passalacqua, Ferrario, Valsecchi and Prato-Previde's [15] study. Therefore, Freidin, Putrino, D'Orazio and Bentosela [11] and Nitzschner, Kaminski, Melis and Tomasello [16] tested this hypothesis by swapping the generous and selfish experimenters' positions before the dogs could choose which experimenter to approach. Their results showed that dogs chose the experimenter on the side where the food interaction had previously happened [16] or chose at random [11], suggesting that results from previous studies could be largely explained by local enhancement.…”