Vive La Difference

I recently read 2 blog posts within a few minutes of each other and couldn't help but draw a parallel. First, right here on Dog Star Daily Dr. Dunbar said Let's Just Be Humans Training Dogs, opening with:

Dogs are not wolves and dog behavior is not the same as wolf behavior. In fact, the most striking difference between dog and wolf behavior is their interaction with people.

A few minutes later, while browsing RSS, I came across Wolves Are Smart, but Dogs Look Back on The Thoughtful Animal, by Jason Goldman.

Jason cited some research done by Miklósi A, Kubinyi E, Topál J, Gácsi M, Virányi Z, & Csányi V (2003) It was compelling enough that I went and read it for myself. (You can too: the full text is available there.)

This research was also covered in a TV special (on PBS I believe?). Dr. Miklosi et. al set up a variety of experiments with both dogs and hand-raised wolves. These experiments duplicated work that had been done earlier by Brian Hare and a few other researchers, but Miklosi et. al. (I'm just going to refer to "Miklosi" from here on) felt that Hare's research "did not control for effects of the differential level of socialization to humans and thus resulted in potentially misleading interpretations"

The experiments involved comparing the behavior of "socialized wolves" to that of dogs in a two different situations:

The first was how the wolves responded to human gestures indicating where food was concealed. (This test has been extensively covered in the news, and by me.) The wolves generally did not perform as well as dogs did, with rather distinct variations between individuals. Miklosi reflects that part of the reason may be the individual wolves preferences for how long they looked at the humans doing the pointing.

The second set of tests involved more sophisticated problem solving: opening a bin or pulling on a rope to get a steak. Both species were given several trials to figure out how to solve the problem, and both did with no significant difference in how long it took. But then they changed the game: they did a set of trials where it was not possible to get the food.

However, during the blocked test trial, in both tasks dogs looked back earlier and spent more time gazing at the human than did socialized wolves. In the bin-opening task, dogs tended to spend more time gazing at the human (U = 11, p < 0.056), and their first look at the owner took place significantly earlier (U = 9, p < 0.03) than it did in wolves. Only two out of seven wolves looked in the direction of the human at all during the blocked trial, while this ratio was the reverse in dogs. Similar results have been obtained in the rope-pulling task. Dogs looked at the human after they tried for approximately 1 min (median) to get the piece of meat, while wolves seemed to ignore the human present (U = 11.5, p < 0.03); seven out of nine dogs looked back at the owner, in contrast to only two wolves out of seven. There was also a significant difference in gazing duration between the species (U = 8.5, p < 0.025); dogs spent more time gazing at the human.

Given an impossible task, wolves worked harder – almost ignoring the people. The dogs gave up more quickly and looked to the people.

This is the very essence of domestication. A hand-raised, socialized, wolf is not a dog. (As Ray Coppinger Jr. puts it in his book, a tame wolf is simply a wolf that is not afraid of people — think about that for a second.) And a feral dog is not a wolf. Domesticated species don't just tolerate people, they interact with them and in the case of dogs, actively seek out contact with them.

So really, let's just be humans training dogs.