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Dogs rely on others

03.10.2015

Dogs are much friendlier than wolves, including towards humans. Wolves have great difficulty understanding human gestures, do not like to make eye contact and do not run after a thrown stick (they can be taught to play, but again with much more difficulty than dogs). Usually high sociality, the ability to establish and maintain contact with another is considered a sign of high intellectual development, so the conclusion that sociable dogs are smarter than their fearsome wild relatives suggests itself.

Experiments seem to confirm this: if a dog and a wolf are faced with an unsolvable task - for example, if they need to open a container of food, but it does not open in any way - then the dog, after a little fiddling, will run to ask for help from the owner, while the wolf will continue to try to overcome the insurmountable . In other words, the dog can adequately assess the task, but the wolf cannot.

But if you change the conditions of the experiment: let the task be quite easy for yourself - how will the wolves and dogs behave? Monique Udell of Oregon State University did just that: 10 dogs and 10 wolves (who grew up next to humans) had to get a piece of sausage from a box that was fairly easy to open by pulling on a string. Shelter dogs were also taken into the experiment, which served as a "middle point" between socialized domestic dogs and wolves.

In one case, the animal was left alone with the box, in the other, a person was also nearby; 2 minutes were given to get a treat. The wolves, left alone, guessed how to open the box in 8 out of 10 cases. Of the ten shelter dogs, only one solved the problem, and none of the domestic dogs could get to the treat. Almost the same thing happened when a person was standing nearby, with one exception - one of the domestic dogs was still able to open the container herself. But on the other hand, all the dogs, as usual, looked at the person for a long time, while the wolves devoted more time to solving the problem on their own.

In the second part of the experiment, those dogs were taken who could not get the sausage. This time, the man was not just standing next to them, but gesticulating and talking to the animals, encouraging the dogs to keep trying. The social stimulus worked well for the shelter dogs, four of which were able to take the treat, and as for the house dogs, only one of them opened the box again. However, when prompted by a person, the dogs spent more time trying to cope with the task. Here it must be emphasized once again that the task was very simple, and the dogs could solve it, but they preferred to wait for help from outside.

It turns out that wolves and dogs use different strategies of behavior: the former rely on their own strength, while the latter rely on, shall we say, social connections, even if such behavior turns out to be useless in the end. Only when the social partner, that is, the person, confirms that what needs to be done must be done, the dogs still make some independent efforts. The reason for this probably lies in the peculiarities of the upbringing of dogs, which are constantly told what not to do, so they get used to waiting for instructions rather than taking the initiative. In addition, domestic dogs have been living in greenhouse conditions side by side with people for thousands of years and are already accustomed to the fact that the owner will come to the rescue in case of emergency.

However, it does not follow from this that wolves are smarter than dogs, just that both use different "forms of the mind." Dogs rely on a social tool when you ask for help and use not your own paws and teeth, but someone else's hands. The wolves have nowhere to wait for help, so they have to manage on their own. On the other hand, here we should not forget that the motivation for both can be different: wolves are more motivated than dogs by food, which can explain the wolf's diligence in getting the sausage out of the box.

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