While it would seem to me that common sense would lead one to conclude that wild Wolves would be more highly advanced than domestic dogs in seeking out food without needing human cues, it has taken a recent University of Vienna study to verify it----"During the study, both dogs and wolves were able to follow communicative cues to find hidden food"............ "However, without direct eye-contact, neither the dogs nor the wolves chose the correct object"..................... "In the absence of a human to show them where the food was located, only the wolves were able to make causal inferences"............""The results of our study suggest that domestication has affected the causal understanding of our dogs".............. "It cannot be excluded however, that the differences can be explained by the fact that wolves are more persistent to explore objects than dogs"............. "Dogs are conditioned to receive food from us, whereas wolves have to find food themselves in nature".............As most of us would agree, if you are constantly given food, clothing and shelter without needing to work for it, you are likely to lose the ability and drive to go about acquiring these things using your own initiative..........Bottom line common sense and reinforced in nature is the fact that the animals(non-human and human) that have to problem solve and go out and make a living on their own without help from others will be able to be more successful acquiring that "living"" than those relying on a handout from someone

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-wolves-effect-dogs.html

Wolves understand cause and effect better than dogs

September 15, 2017

Domestic dogs may have lost some of their innate animal skill when they came in from the wild, according to new research conducted at the Wolf Science Center in Austria.

n a study comparing wolves and dogs living in near-identical environments, wolves were better at working some things out, particularly at grasping the notion of cause and effect.

The research, by an international team in Austria, the Netherlands, Germany and England, is published in Scientific Reports.

Recently graduated lead author Michelle Lampe, of the Radboud University, in the Netherlands, said: "Children learn the principle of cause and effect early on, that if you touch a hot stove you will get burned, for example. Our study has shown the wolf also understands such connections, but our four-legged domesticated companions don't.

"It seems wolves are better at working some things out than dogs, which suggests domestication has changed dogs' cognitive abilities.

"It can't be ruled out that the differences could be due to wolves being more persistent in exploring than dogs. Dogs are conditioned to receive food from us, whereas wolves have to find food themselves in nature."

Michelle Lampe, Dr Zsófia Virányi, of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Dr Juliane Bräuer, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany, and Dr Juliane Kaminski, of the University of Portsmouth, UK, investigated the reasoning abilities of 14 dogs and 12 human-socialised wolves.

The tests included the animals having to choose between two objects, one containing hidden food and the other empty to see whether the animals could make use of communicative cues, such as direct eye-contact and pointing gestures to choose the correct container.

Both dogs and wolves were able to follow communicative cues to find hidden food. However, in the absence of a human to show them where the food was, only the wolves were able to make causal inferences.

Dr Kaminski said: "In this experiment, the wolves showed a high understanding of cause and effect, which the dogs lacked.

"The wolves' use of cues connected to eye-contact was particularly interesting because it may help science better understand the process by which wild animals became our four-legged companions."

Dr Bräuer said: "The wolves' ability to understand human communicative cues after being socialised with humans, may have made it possible to become domesticated."

The authors say the results are compelling because in addition to comparing dogs and wolves living under identical conditions, with the same history and training regime, they also compared dogs living in packs to pets living with their human families.

Fourth author, Dr Virányi, said: "We were able to tease apart the influence of domestication from raising and living conditions. Few studies have achieved such strong, clear comparisons, though we must caution, too, that the wolves we studied are used to humans, which needs to be taken into account."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170915095154.htm

Wolves understand cause and effect better than dogs

Date:

September 15, 2017

Source:

University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna

Summary:

A rattle will only make noise if you shake it. Animals like the wolf also understand such connections and are better at this than their domesticated descendants. Researchers say that wolves have a better causal understanding than dogs and that they follow human-given communicative cues equally well. The study provides insight that the process of domestication can also affect an animal's causal understanding.