Mar 10, 2017

Dogs versus Wolves: Imitators of Conspecifics

Erin Diffley '17

Throughout hundreds of years, dogs have been domesticated by humans. Domestication has been shown to have affected the mental processes of canines. Because of this, dogs have been bred to automatically want attention from humans while mimicking what they are told (i.e. dog training). However, it is not well known how domestication has affection their interactions within their species, also known as conspecifics. Wolves, on the other hand, have widely roamed free with little to no human interaction throughout their lives. This study takes a closer look at the cooperative breeding hypothesis. Because wolves live in packs and must work together to survive, selection pressures have been evolved into stronger cognitive abilities which in turn makes wolves pay close attention to their conspecifics. Domesticated dogs do not have these selection pressures so they are not required to study and learn from their conspecifics to survive. To perform this study, wolves (born in captivity) and dogs spent the first five months of their lives interacting with humans and learning basic training skills. The animals also grew up with their conspecifics. In this study, a demonstrator animal would perform a task with its conspecific watching. The test subject would then be required to perform the same task. This study shows that six-month-old wolves outperform their domesticated counterparts on problem solving tasks, such as pushing a lever on a box. The wolves almost always solved the problem while the dogs rarely did even after watching their conspecific. These results support wolves learned better with conspecifics than dogs, also supporting the canine intraspecific cooperation hypothesis.