Canine Cooperation Hypothesis: Thank The Social Skills Of Wolves For Dog-Human Cooperation
Canine Cooperation Hypothesis: Thank The Social Skills Of Wolves For Dog-Human Cooperation
By News Staff | January 20th 2015 10:43 AM
Most dogs and most humans get along well now and anthropological explanations are that selective selection is the reason; wolves that were not a threat were not killed and over time the agreeable ones got shelter and food. That cooperation has led to thousands of years of being man's best friend.
Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi from the Unit of Comparative Cognition at the Messerli Research Institute at University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna have an alternate idea, the "Canine Cooperation Hypothesis". They believe that since wolves already are tolerant, attentive and cooperative, the relationship of wolves to their pack mates could have provided the basis for today's human-dog relationship.
Additional selection, at least for social attentiveness and tolerance, was not necessary during canine domestication.
The researchers believe that wolves are not less socially attentive than dogs, it is just that dogs cooperate more easily with humans because they more readily accept people as social partners and more easily lose their fear of humans. To test their hypothesis, Range and Virányi examined the social attentiveness and tolerance of wolves and dogs within their packs and toward humans.
Various behavioral tests showed that wolves and dogs have quite similar social skills. Among other things, the researchers tested how well wolves and dogs can find food that has been hidden by a conspecific or by a human. Both wolves and dogs used information provided by a human to find the hidden food.
More:
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/canine_cooperation_hypothesis_thank_the_social_skills_of_wolves_for_doghuman_cooperation-152441
= new reply since forum marked as read
interesting to read how this came about 
