Several studies have shown that dogs track the direction of gaze of humans and the direction of pointing, while wolves cannot do this. However, with these studies there has been the question that the wolves and dogs were not reared under comparable circumstances. When wolf pups are reared with other wolves for any length of time before the pups are 8-10 weeks old, they later become shy and fearful of humans, regardless of how much subsequent socialization they have with people. Dog pups, on the other hand, are routinely reared with other dogs before they are 8-10 weeks old, and have no problem subsequently adapting to people.
This difference in socialization, however, can affect how wolf pups and dog pups respond to the eye gaze and pointing signals of humans.
To take this problem into account, a recent study in Hungary raised wolf pups and dog pups under identical conditions of socialization. The results of the study are reported in an article scheduled for publication in the journal Animal Cognition (Z. Viranyi, M. Gascsi, E. Kubinyi, J. Topal, B. Belenyi, D. Ujfalussy, and A. Miklosi. 2007. Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition DOI10.1007/s10071-007-0127-y).
In the study, the authors looked at the responses of 9 hand-reared wolf pups and 8 hand-reared dog pups, all of which were taken from their mothers and their littermates at the age of 4-10 days and raised by humans. When the pups were 4 months old, the authors did several experiments to establish whether the wolf pups and the dog pups would respond identically to pointing gestures by humans.
In one experiment, a person held two bowls and a piece of food while the pup was held by another person at some distance on a leash. The person with the bowls put the food into one of the bowls, switched the bowls several times from hand to hand, then put the bowls down about 4.5 feet apart (1.5 meters), and tried to establish eye contact with the pup. As soon as eye contact was established (sometimes it took calling the pup by her name or clapping hands), the person briefly pointed to the dish with the food, and then brought her hands back to her chest. The leash was then dropped, and the pup was free to go to either bowl.
As a check on the procedure, 9 pet dogs who were 4 months old and had been reared with their mothers and littermates until they were 6-9 weeks old were also tested with this procedure.
The results showed that both the pet dogs and the hand-reared dogs were able to establish eye contact within an average of 3 seconds, and went to the bowl with the food an average of 14 out of 20 times. The wolf pups, on the other hand, took an average of 11 seconds to establish eye contact, and went to the correct bowl an average of 10 out of 20 times, which is no different from randomly picking a bowl (random picking would give exactly 10 out of 20). So, even though the hand-reared wolf pups were raised the same way as the hand-reared dog pups, the wolves did much worse than the dogs at looking at people and following the direction of pointing.
There is, however, another part to this story. Ten hand-reared wolves were extensively trained in retrieving the food from the correct bowl, from the time they were 4 months old to the time they were 11 months. These wolves were then tested in the above experimental procedure at the age of 11 months, and compared with the responses of 10 pet dogs who were also 11 months old.
Now the wolves had the same responses as the dogs. They established eye contact within 3 seconds, and both groups chose the bowl with the food more often than if they were choosing it randomly.
The moral of the story is, a wolf is not a dog and vice versa, despite their high level of genetic similarity as measured by DNA tests. However, with time and practice, a wolf can learn to do some of the things that seem to come naturally to a dog.
--Con Slobodchikoff
The Hungarian group is certainly one of the leading pioneers in canine cognition research. Another group in The Netherlands, working out of Vrije University in Amsterdam, is also taking a close look at the roles played by scent and body language in dog communication and the researchers claim to have developed a new approach to raising dogs without traditional reinforcement techniques. In a personal communication received from this group in 2006, I was told that behaviorists and trainers are moving away from the wolf society model of dog training because dog societies are quite different from those of wolves. For one thing, dogs aren’t as ‘fixated’ on social rank and hierarchy issues, so they’re not constantly looking for opportunities to challenge a higher-ranked animal to improve their own social position. Forcing a dog pup into submission the way a higher-ranking wolf would maintain its position over a lower-ranking wolf doesn’t make sense when you consider the differences between C. lupus and C. familiaris and their respective social organizations. More information about the “De Roeder” research may be found at: www.cs.vu.nl/en/sec/ai/asr/Projects/dogproject/html.
Posted by: Randall Johnson | June 02, 2008 at 06:56 AM