Domestication Diminished Dogs' Ability to Learn From Each Other, Unlike Wolves

The bond and understanding that dogs have with humans may be rooted in wolves and their tendency to observe and learn from one another, according to scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, who suggest that domestication has diminished dogs' ability to learn things from one another. 

Wolves and dogs are closely related, but they exhibit some striking behavioral differences, the researchers report, noting that their study focuses on the observation that wolves display a greater level of cooperation between each other and observe one another more than dogs do.

"Wolves were domesticated more than 15,000 years ago and it is widely assumed that the ability of domestic dogs to form close relationships with humans stems from changes during the domestication process," the University of Veterinary Medicine said in a statement. "But the effects of domestication on the interactions between the animals have not received much attention."

University of Veterinary Medicine researchers Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi devised a study to more closely examine this relationship between observation and learning in wolves, finding that wolves are considerably better at opening a container than dogs, provided they had previously watched another animal do so before.

The experiment included 14 wolves and 15 mixed-breed dogs, all about 6 months old, hand-reared and kept in packs.

The animals were shown one of two scenarios involving a trained dog using its mouth or its paws to open a box containing a food reward. All of the wolves in the study were able to gain access to the food reward after watching a dog solve the puzzle beforehand, but only four of the dogs were able to do the same. 

Additionally, the wolves were more likely to open the box using the method they had previously observed, while the dogs appeared to randomly choose how they accessed the reward, the researchers said.

To rule out the possibility that 6-month-old dogs were not successful because their cognitive skills had not developed enough at such a young age, the same dogs were tested again at 9 months old. But being older did not help; the dogs proved no more adept at opening the box than they were at a younger age.

It is possible, the researchers said, that wolves are simply better at solving these sorts of problems than dogs are.

To test that theory, the researchers examined the animals' ability to get the food reward out of the box without a prior demonstration of how its done. In that situation, the wolves were rarely successful.

"Their problem-solving capability really seems to be based on the observation of a dog performing the task," Range said. "The wolves watched the dog very closely and were able to apply their new knowledge to solve the problem. Their skill at copying probably relates to the fact that wolves are more dependent on cooperation with conspecifics than dogs are and therefore pay more attention to the actions of their partners."

These findings led Range and Virányi to suggest that the human-dog cooperation that exists today has its roots in the cooperation between wolves. But during the domestication process, dogs have come to see humans as social partners and have adjusted to that accordingly, thus losing the ability to learn by watching other dogs, the researchers said.

The research is published in the journal PLOS One.