Dog Behavior Blog

Dog Behavior Conference

Coming up in early July 2008 is a conference that everyone interested in dog behavior should know about.  The conference is going to be held on July 5-9, 2008 at the the ELTE Convention Centre: Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. The conference website is http://csf2008.elte.hu  There will be presentations on the evolution, behavior, cognition, ecology and genetics of dogs and related canids from speakers and experts from all over the world.  The head of the organizing committee, Professor Ádám Miklósi, is the author of Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition (Oxford University Press), and has done a considerable amount of scientific work studying the behavior of dogs, particularly their cognitive abilities.

Invited speakers at the conference are Robert Wayne, James Serpell, József Topál, Heidi Parker, Jane Packard, Sabine Nowak, Ray Coppinger, Marc Bekoff and Vilmos Csányi.  All of these people have studied dogs, dog behavior, dog genetics, dog cognition, and dog emotions, and will undoubtedly give informative and stellar presentations of their latest research and their views on dog behavior.

This promises to be an extremely interesting conference. I hope that at least some of you will be able to attend.

---Con Slobodchikoff

A Dog's Concern For A Cat

Last Wednesday, our cat Seri was bitten by a spider, probably a Brown Recluse. We knew that something was wrong when she disappeared under the bed and would not come out, mewing piteously on occasion. On Thursday she was still under the bed, and would not come out to eat, something that was pretty unusual for her, because she is a social cat who loves to eat from her dish in the bathroom while we are brushing our teeth or otherwise getting ready for the new day.

Thursday evening I finally managed to extract her from under the bed to see what was wrong. Careful inspection revealed a characteristic spider bite, a large red ring enclosing dead tissue, with specks of blood throughout the affected area.

Friday morning I managed to get an appointment with our veterinarian, and put Seri into a cat carrier so that I could take her in to be evaluated.

During the whole time that Seri was under the bed, our Standard Poodle Raja kept sitting by the edge of the bed, and would not move except to eat or go outside briefly. When I put Seri in the cat carrier, Raja was right there, nuzzling the carrier and whining softly.

As the time of the appointment neared, I put Seri into the car, preparing to go. Raja, who usually is very obedient about waiting at doorways to get permission to go through, ran past me to the car and jumped in through the open door. Since it was already a hot day, I could not take him with me to the vet’s office, so I told him to get out. He did, reluctantly. But then he would not go back into the house. He kept running around the car and ignored my demands that he go inside. Finally, I had to lift up all 45 pounds of poodle and carry him into the house. He parked himself by the front door and would not leave that spot.

The vet confirmed that Seri had been bitten by a spider, gave me some antibiotic drops, and assured me that the bite should clear up within a couple of weeks.

Raja was overjoyed when I returned with Seri. As I took her out of the cat carrier, he kept trying to nuzzle her, to the point where she was starting to get irritated. When I released her, she ran under the bed, and Raja took up his position by the bedside.

Seri is now getting better, whether from the antibiotic drops or from the green tea compresses that we have been applying, and Raja is much more relaxed.

During the time that Seri was feeling poorly, Raja was acting like a concerned parent whose child was sick.  As I think about this, I can put on my scientific hat and say that this is all anecdotal information that proves nothing. Or I can put on my hat of someone who believes that dogs have strong emotions and have great concern for the fellow beings who inhabit their houses. Of these two alternatives, I prefer the emotional one.  Which one would you choose?

--Con Slobodchikoff

Another Difference Between Wolves And Dogs

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This post is written by guest commentator Randall Johnson.  Once involved in river dolphin research and preservation, Randall Johnson lives in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where he works as a Portuguese-English translator. His household includes three dogs, two of which were adopted off the streets, and he's active in a local group that rescues stray dogs and works to find them good homes. For another dog-related essay by Randall Johnson, see his post, A New View of Dog Domestication: Human-Canid Co-evolution, on the Reconnect With Nature Blog, http://www.reconnectwithnatureblog.com

While we’re on the subject, another significance difference between wolves and dogs is the way each species goes about solving problems. Wolves are excellent independent problem solvers and, not so long ago, wolf researchers claimed that C. lupus could carry out certain tasks more intelligently than C. familiaris because, during the domestication process, dogs suffered a reduction in intellectual capacity, as did other domestic animals. (See Frank, H. and M.G. Frank, “Comparative Manipulation-Test Performance in Ten-Week-Old Wolves and Alaskan Malamutes”, Journal of Comparative Psychology, 90 (1985), pp. 266-74.) After all, the dog’s brain is 30% smaller than that of a wolf.

However, the previously-mentioned Hungarian team, consisting of Vilmos Csány, Ádám Miklósi, and Jozef Topál, was not satisfied with this conclusion. Their own research had shown that dogs showed signs of greater mental agility, that their minds could be developed more through environmental influences and learning than through genetic determinants, as was the case with wolves.

First, they pointed out the difference in brain size primarily affects the sensory areas, especially vision, audition, and olfaction. In other words, dogs don’t see, smell, or hear as acutely as wolves do because as they associated more with human groups, there was no steady pressure to maintain these senses at optimum capacity.

Then, referring back to the Frank study, in which a wolf learned how to open a backyard gate after observing a human open it only once, whereas its yard-mate, a malamute, seemingly never learned how to do it, Csányi and colleagues designed a different experiment with 28 dogs of different breeds and their masters. The researchers worked with master-dog pairs one at a time. While the master sat in a chair in a room used for conducting the experiment, the dog was confronted with a problem to solve. The dog faced a firmly fixed wire fence with a gap at the bottom. Ten dishes with long handles and containing cold cuts were placed under the fence just beyond the gap, with the handle of every other dish pointing toward the dog. The remaining handles faced the opposite direction. The dogs were able to grab the handles facing them, pull the dish out and eat the cold cuts.

The experiment leader demonstrated the procedure by pulling out the dishes whose handles were pointing toward him and eating the cold cuts. The dogs were then given three minutes to get the cold cuts. Some dogs got all of the meat and some got none. There were differences among the dogs, but the results didn’t depend on their gender, age, breeding, or degree of training.

The decisive factor was the relationship they had with their master. About half of the dogs selected for the experiment were family (indoor) dogs and the other half were outdoor dogs, i.e., guard dogs that did not live indoors. The outdoor dogs, which were more independent, were more successful at getting the food than the indoor dogs, which were better adapted to their master.

On average, the outdoor dogs obtained three times as much food as the others. Now, during the first minute and a half, the masters had to sit quietly and not speak to their dogs. However, in the remaining ninety seconds, they could encourage their dogs any way they saw fit. The outdoor dogs didn’t wait for any encouragement. They set about solving the task and soon got the hang of it. The indoor dogs, on the other hand, waited for permission to start and frequently glanced at the master. They only engaged in the task after permission or encouragement had been given. After receiving permission, there was no difference in the performance between the indoor and outdoor dogs.

Wolves are much more independent, whereas dogs prefer to work under human direction. Csány and colleagues believe this is the source of the differential assessment of the intelligence of the two. Going back to Frank’s example, the wolf, being a self-reliant animal, learned how to open the gate because it wanted to get out. The malamute, like any well-behaved dog, knew it wasn’t allowed to go outside, so it obeyed the rule and didn’t try to leave the yard.

--Randall Johnson

Wolves Need To Learn What Pointing Means

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