Tracking the evolutionary origins of dog-human cooperation: the "Canine Cooperation Hypothesis"

Abstract

At present, beyond the fact that dogs can be easier socialized with humans than wolves, we know little about the motivational and cognitive effects of domestication. Despite this, it has been suggested that during domestication dogs have become socially more tolerant and attentive than wolves. These two characteristics are crucial for cooperation, and it has been argued that these changes allowed dogs to successfully live and work with humans. However, these domestication hypotheses have been put forward mainly based on dog-wolf differences reported in regard to their interactions with humans. Thus, it is possible that these differences reflect only an improved capability of dogs to accept humans as social partners instead of an increase of their general tolerance, attentiveness and cooperativeness. At the Wolf Science Center, in order to detangle these two explanations, we raise and keep dogs and wolves similarly socializing them with conspecifics and humans and then test them in interactions not just with humans but also conspecifics. When investigating attentiveness toward human and conspecific partners using different paradigms, we found that the wolves were at least as attentive as the dogs to their social partners and their actions. Based on these findings and the social ecology of wolves, we propose the Canine Cooperation Hypothesis suggesting that wolves are characterized with high social attentiveness and tolerance and are highly cooperative. This is in contrast with the implications of most domestication hypotheses about wolves. We argue, however, that these characteristics of wolves likely provided a good basis for the evolution of dog-human cooperation.

Keywords: Canis familiaris; Canis lupus; attention; cooperation; domestication; evolution; tolerance.

Figure 1

Life at the Wolf Science Center. Pictures show the socialization of the study animals with pet dogs (A), hand raising of the animals (B), interactions with humans (C), participation in experiments (D) and pack life of wolves (E) and dogs (F) (Photographers: F. Range, F. Schwärzler, H. Möslinger, W. Vorbeck, P. Kaut).

Figure 2

Diagram of the “Canine Cooperation Hypothesis”.

Figure 3

Social learning from a human and conspecific demonstrator. (A) depicts the success of wolves and dogs in the human demonstration (HUMAN_DEM) and respective control condition (HUMAN_CON). (B) shows the success of wolves and dogs in the conspecific demonstration (DOG_DEM) and control condition (DOG_CON). Adapted from Range and Virányi (2013).

Figure 4

Imitation of conspecifics. The pictures depict the two different demonstrations (A: Paw demonstration; B: Mouth demonstration) of opening the baited box, wolves and dogs observed six times before being allowed to try to open the box by themselves. The table lists the number of animals that first manipulated the most relevant part of the box, the lever, that were successful at least once in opening the box and finally used the method that they had observed to open the box. In all three variables the wolves and dogs differed significantly from each other (for further details see Range and Virányi, 2014).