Wolves were smarter than dogs.
The ethologists from the Center for the study of wolves in the Vienna veterinary Institute of the max Planck society have shown that wolves understand the relationship between cause and effect, and dogs no.
Vienna scientists took 12 wolves, 14 dogs from a stray pack of 12 pet dogs and stayed with them a series of experiments in which animals were tested for intelligence in three different ways. Used two boxes: one was a treat, wrapped tightly in plastic so that wolves and dogs don’t smell, the second box was empty.
In the first experiment tested the ability of animals to understand instructions, people: a man showed on the desired box, looking animals in the eye, and tried to open it. In the second experiment, people only showed interest in the desired box, not looking at animals. The third man was not, but the box moved so that the sound can be understood, there is something inside or not.
Communicative and behavioral cues from a person perfectly understood, and dogs, and wolves. When it came to a situation in which you had to draw a conclusion based on observations, the wolves were smarter: they, unlike dogs, clearly understood the link between noise and filling the box.
The experiments of the Austrian scientists have questioned the assumption that during domestication dogs have learned better than their wild relatives, to understand the signals of human subjects. “In nature, wolves have to rely on their own observations and intelligence, and dogs, which feeds people, it is not necessary; perhaps in the course of domestification dogs lost the ability to understand the relationship between cause and effect. At the same time, the ability to communicate with humans, perhaps there are wolves, and dogs, and the domestication did not play a big role in its development”, — commented one of the study’s authors Julian Brower (Juliane Bräuer).
Informed the Austrian ethologists have proven that, contrary to popular belief, wolves friendly dogs to other dogs, rarely attacking members of his flock and more likely to share food.
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