Man’s Underground Best Friend: Domestic Ferrets, Unlike the Wild Forms, Show Evidence of Dog-Like Social-Cognitive Skills

Abstract

Recent research has shown that dogs’ possess surprisingly sophisticated human-like social communication skills compared to wolves or chimpanzees. The effects of domestication on the emergence of socio-cognitive skills, however, are still highly debated. One way to investigate this is to compare socialized individuals from closely related domestic and wild species. In the present study we tested domestic ferrets (Mustela furo) and compared their performance to a group of wild Mustela hybrids and to domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). We found that, in contrast to wild Mustela hybrids, both domestic ferrets and dogs tolerated eye-contact for a longer time when facing their owners versus the experimenter and they showed a preference in a two-way choice task towards their owners. Furthermore, domestic ferrets, unlike the wild hybrids, were able to follow human directional gestures (sustained touching; momentary pointing) and could reach the success rate of dogs. Our study provides the first evidence that domestic ferrets, in a certain sense, are more dog-like than their wild counterparts. These findings support the hypothesis that domestic species may share basic socio-cognitive skills that enable them to engage in effectively orchestrated social interactions with humans.

Differential effects of oxytocin on social sensitivity in two distinct breeds of dogs ( Canis familiaris )

“…Finally, dogs were presented with a Tolerance of prolonged eye contact trial (similar to that used by Hernádi et al, 2012) in order to assess whether, after having received intranasal oxytocin, dogs would show a higher tendency to keep eye contact with an unfamiliar human (for video protocol and photograph see Supplementary material S2). Dogs' readiness to establish and maintain eye contact with the E was recorded in room B.…”

Behavior Genetics and the Domestication of Animals

“…Whether this is a general aspect of domestication or specific to highly cooperative dogs is not yet fully understood. However, recent research has shown that ferrets and pigs are able to perform some of the communicative skills normally associated with dogs (34,35), which indicates that this may be a general domestication trait.…”

A comparison of pet and purpose-bred research dog (Canis familiaris) performance on human-guided object-choice tasks

“…Thus, domestication is sufficient to predict success on tasks such as following a human pointing gesture to locate hidden food. Other domesticated species including cats (Miklósi et al, 2005), goats (Kaminski et al, 2005), ferrets (Hernádi et al, 2012), horses (Maros et al, 2008), and pigs (Nawroth et al, 2013) have also demonstrated the ability to follow a human point. The Domestication hypothesis is further supported by studies demonstrating other possible genetic influences on point-following performance in dogs.…”