Is the dog really that awesome? Or more exactly, is it really unique? On the map of domestication, there is no doubt: if cats and horses have shared our lives for about eight thousand years, dogs have accompanied us for fifteen thousand to thirty-five thousand years, depending on whether we choose to follow the most audacious or the most scrupulous zoologists. Since those remote times, we have further offered them multiple roles, guardians, hunters, shepherds, selecting their abilities, cultivating their performance.
But what does science say? For a long time, we praised their generosity towards their master, but also towards humans in general – think of rescue dogs –, or between themselves. At the Konrad-Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna (Austria), Friederike Range decided to check the legend, to see above all whether it was to be attributed to millennia of domestication or just from the pet dog lifestyle.
So she set out to breed wolves and dogs under the same conditions, both in separate groups and in contact with humans. Then she observed their cooperation in a basic test requiring two animals to simultaneously pull on two ropes to open a box and access food. Wolves succeeded with ease, most dog pairs failed. In a second test, the animal had to cooperate with a familiar human, this time: the two species passed the bar, the wolf more easily than the dog however.
Testing social behaviors
The Viennese team also tested what is called “prosocial behavior”, in other words the ability to act for the other. In previous tests carried out ten years ago, pairs of companion dogs had shown impressive solidarity. One operated a lever to feed the other, even if he personally did not derive any benefit from it. A behavior also observed in rats, it should be noted. Except that, this time, the dogs raised in enclosures did not pass the test. The wolves have passed it successfully, provided they belong to the same clan.
Wolves also show more social tolerance, for example in food sharing. “It’s not a question of generosity, just a consequence of history: the wolves hunted big game, which they shared, the dogs ate leftovers and learned to defend their sustenance”advance Friederike Range.
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