Hand-raising of wolves for comparative purposes: studies on dogs and wolves social cognition. Scientific publications are available at the homepage of Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary

The dog's eyes have it

By Katharine Arney

Clever canines can do something which not even our closest relative, the chimp, can manage.

They can follow the human gaze or a pointing hand, figure out what it is we are looking at and seek out the target.

Dogs have spent thousands of years living with humans so a Hungarian research team set out to investigate whether this cunning ability came from wolves, the genetic ancestors of today's dogs, or developed during domestication.

Dr Adam Miklosi, at Eotvos University in Budapest, compared the abilities of dogs with hand-reared wolves to find hidden food from human cues, such as pointing.

These experiments are the first ever performed with such highly "humanised" wolves, brought up with round-the-clock care from volunteers in Dr Miklosi's department.

Bait on a rope

The wolves could find the food when their handler either tapped the correct hiding place or pointed from a close distance.

They also eventually learnt to track down their dinner by following pointing from a distance.

Dogs had no trouble with any of the tasks.

However, the real difference came when the researchers tested the dogs and wolves in a tricky situation.

Food was hidden in a bin or on the end of a rope, and the animals got used to opening the bin or pulling the rope to get the bait.

But when the bin was sealed shut, or the rope tied down, the main contrast between the two became clear.

Hand-me down

Dogs frequently looked back at their master while wolves just kept their heads down and tried to solve the problem.

Wild wolves generally tend not to look at human faces, and not even careful hand-rearing of the wolves could change this behaviour.

In contrast, dogs have a tendency to follow the human gaze as they are accustomed to looking at our faces for clues.

This difference in the behaviour between the humanised wolves and dogs tells us that they must have picked up this ability during domestication, over the past 15,000 years.

Different intelligence

Dr Miklosi said: "Looking at the gaze or engaging in eye contact is a typical human signal, so dogs could be said to be using a behaviour that is analogous to ours."

It has been suggested that the ability to follow a gaze demonstrates an understanding of mental states, indicating a "higher mind".

Although many dog owners would claim their pets are almost human, Dr Miklosi suggests "it is very difficult to prove whether these behavioural features correspond to human behaviour.

"I would not say that dogs have a higher intelligence but a different one. Dogs are said to be 'dumb' animals because they are provided for by humans.

"But we think that dogs have adapted to the human and acquired skills to survive here.

"As we know, one needs social skills to survive among humans, so it seems that dogs have acquired them, too."

The research is published in the journal Current Biology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/2956766.stm

Animal Planet: Dogs Read Humans Better than Wolves, May 2, 2003. By Larry O'Hanlon, Animal Planet News

May 2, 2003 � If you want an attentive canine companion, don't consider a wolf. A study comparing wolves and dogs shows that dogs seem to have an inherited ability to pay closer attention to and understand human gestures and faces � and it's no accident.

"People think that dogs are dumbed-down wolves," said wolf researcher Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado. Instead, dogs are actually wolves that have been bred for behaviors and looks that please us, he said.

To hone in on just what behaviors we've bred into dogs, researchers at Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary, raised some wolf puppies just like dogs and compared how well they were able to pick up on human cues to where food was hidden. The results of the study were published in the current issue of the journal Current Biology.

In the experiments, individual four-month-old dogs and wolves were brought into an area and watched as meat was hidden in one of two containers. After switching the containers so the canines could not know which had the meat, each dog or wolf was clued into the location of the meat by the researcher, who touched, pointed or gazed at the correct container.

Man's best friend, it turned out, was always quicker than the wolves when it came to looking at the human and figuring out from the gesture where the food was hidden. In fact the wolves, despite being raised by humans, were far less likely to bother looking at the human at all, said Adam Miklósi, one of the researchers in the study.

The dogs' behavior implies that communication with humans is something that's in domestic dogs' genes, said Miklósi, and Bekoff agreed.

But that doesn't mean that wolves are in any way less smart than dogs. In fact, it seems that wolf puppies have a wider range of individual behavior differences than dog puppies, meaning dogs are more specialized than wolves.

"It's kind of neat from a behavioral point of view," said Bekoff.

It also makes sense, considering all the other ways humans have selected characteristics in dogs that make them more specialized than their wild relatives, he said.

Wolves, on the other hand, have had their physical features and behaviors selected primarily by their natural environment, where communicating with humans isn't a top priority.

http://animal.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030428/dogwolf.html

Why Wolves Aren't Man's Best Friend

Most dog owners have experienced that moment when the soulful eyes of their companions look to their empty dog dishes, up into their humans' eyes, and back to the empty dog dish. That propensity to look at humans' faces may be the key difference between dogs and their wolf ancestors.

Most researchers agree that dogs diverged from wolves and took up residence with humans over 10,000 years ago. But how the split occurred and how much dogs differ from wolves isn't known.

Searching for answers, researchers at Eotvos University in Budapest, Hungary, examined how dog and wolf pups interacted with humans when problem-solving. To make sure the wolf pups were well-socialized, the researchers gave them to graduate students who fed them every 4 hours and carried them in baby slings from 4 days after birth until they were able to scoot around independently. One set of experiments showed that both dogs and wolves can follow human directions, such as pointing or other gestures, to find chunks of meat hidden in containers, although the wolf pups had less success.

The difference between the canines was more apparent when the researchers made the test unsolvable by locking the food inside a container. The wolves tended to ignore their humans and tried to get to the meat themselves. The dogs, however, looked back at their masters sooner and longer, interrupting their own efforts to get the food. It's possible that by looking back at humans, dogs are more likely to enlist their help and get the meat. But the researchers say their experiments don't shed any light on the dogs' motives. The findings simply show that humans have selected canine companions that communicate like humans, says Aám Miklósi, lead author of the work, published in the 29 April issue of Current Biology.

The difference between wolves and dogs may be driven by how they pay attention, says Brian Hare, a graduate student in psychology at Harvard University. He and colleagues reported similar findings last year (Science, 22 November 2002, p. 1634). Dogs' ability to pay attention to humans' signals, Hare posits, may be a byproduct of breeding for calmer temperaments.

--NAOMI LUBICK

http://bric.postech.ac.kr/science/97now/03_4now/030429c.html

** The dog's eyes have it **: Dogs follow our gaze or a pointing hand, say scientists investigating how the animals interpret gestures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/2956766.stm

Animal Planet: Dogs Read Humans Better than Wolves, May 2, 2003. By Larry O'Hanlon, Animal Planet News

May 2, 2003 � If you want an attentive canine companion, don't consider a wolf. A study comparing wolves and dogs shows that dogs seem to have an inherited ability to pay closer attention to and understand human gestures and faces � and it's no accident.

"People think that dogs are dumbed-down wolves," said wolf researcher Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado. Instead, dogs are actually wolves that have been bred for behaviors and looks that please us, he said.

http://animal.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030428/dogwolf.html

Fast ein Mensch
Hunde. Wie nahe stehen einander der Mensch und sein liebstes Haustier wirklich? Neue Forschungen stellen das Sprichwort vom besten Freund des Menschen auf ein wissenschaftliches Fundament.
Von Alwin Schönberger

http://www.profil.at/export/profil/ressort/0018/2000_22/1030282.shtml

international news : Der Hund � der beste Freund der Menschen

http://www.backnang-online.info/modules/news/article.php?storyid=430

http://bric.postech.ac.kr/science/97now/03_4now/030429c.html