It is saddening that people do not come together for the preservation of our Wildlife the same way that Wolves have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are capable of working together as 1.
Dogs have evolved to be friendly and tolerant of humans and one another, which might suggest they would be good at cooperative tasks.
Wolves are known to cooperate in hunting and even in raising one another’s pups, but they can seem pretty intolerant of one another when they are snapping and growling around a kill.
So researchers at the Wolf Science Center at the University of Vienna decided to compare the performance of wolves and dogs on a classic behavioral test.
To get a food treat, two animals have to pull ropes attached to different ends of a tray. The trick is that they have to pull both ropes at the same time. Chimps, parrots, rooks and elephants have all succeeded at the task.
When Sarah Marshall-Pescini, Friederike Range and colleagues put wolves and dogs to the test, wolves did very well and dogs very poorly. In recordings of the experiments, the pairs of wolves look like experts, while the dogs seem, well, adorable and confused.
The researchers reported their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
With no training, five of seven wolf pairs succeeded in mastering the task at least once. Only one of eight dog pairs did.
With individual training intended to show the animals that if both ropes were held in the mouth, they could get the treat, three of four wolf pairs succeeded multiple times. Two of six dog pairs succeeded — once.
Dr. Marshall-Pescini said both wolves and dogs were raised in exactly the same conditions at the center, where they live in groups with a lot of human contact but are not kept as pets. The reason for wolves performing much better, she said, might be that in the wild they must cooperate in bringing down big game and sharing it if they are to survive.
Dogs, whether they are free-ranging, foraging at garbage dumps or looking for discarded food, don’t need teamwork.
But defining tolerance, which is supposed to aid cooperation, is tricky.
“Wolves argue a lot around food,” she said. “But in the end they eat together.” As for dogs, she said, “They don’t even argue about it.” An earlier study of free-ranging dogs, she said, showed that the dominant dog ate first and other dogs waited.
Of course, pet dogs often eat together with two bowls. And dogs can be trained to do just about anything; even the act of training may change their ability to cooperate.
In a previous study, dogs that had been highly trained — not at the rope pull test, but for other tasks — were much better able to succeed at the rope pull.
Source: Wolves Know How to Work Together – The New York Times
Comments
To answer the title question:
From an ethological point of view:
Humans have a social orientation that includes using any possible social interaction to advance themselves or their temporary coalition to higher status (only some remnant cultures choose to socially penalize this sociopathic behavior, but the fact that they do, means we are not completely subject to our worst inherited characteristics).
Wolves are also highly emotion-driven, but are by nature more generous when hungry, for instance, than are humans. Humans have artificially selected dog characteristics, in the case of working, alarm, and comfort dogs, to change the original adult wolf monogamous bond into one that tolerates less inclusion. Additionally, dogs have been selected to have more flexible bonding – this has turned out to mean tat they were selected to retain the subadult sibling characteristics of competition, rather than the adult wolf bond of cooperation. This is a neotenic trait, and all that Ive mentioned may be inextricably linked, due to the multifaceted capacity of genes:
Genes can form anatomical organs AND behavioral traits. The brain’s neurons express most of the orgnaism’s genome, and far more genes are expressed in neurons tan in any other cells.
Think of having smell preferences for carrion. We don’t they do. our immune system and our diets are different because of what we are. We look at widespread ungulate eyes, and are stimulated to think cute bambi. The wolf sees this characteristic physical phenotypic attribute and is both nonconsciously and consciously stimulated to think “Lunch!”
Hope I helped you understand why human selection of dog traits can’t work for wolves, and vice-versa.
This was last year’s research as I remember. Some dogs DO both learn and exhibit more wolflike sharing. Those genes are always mixing, with different ones suppressed or enabled. The issue requires familiarity with molecular research so abstruse to the public that it takes some years to understand – and the language is so far from popular language that the latter research is pretty untranslatable.
I do it because of being, like the wolf, eager to share in the trust that humans will one day welcome wolves across the distance of each of our integrities, knowing how to both stay aware and curious as the indigenous teach to watch as the wolf watches, listen to hear what the wolf hears, of the other, rather than quiver in fear and kill.
Dogs and wolves BOTH, have an exquisite awareness fo fairness, alert to the relationship of another toward one or another. Humans are creepily deceptive, though, and I may have told stories of how wolves utterly reject deception when aimed at them. The wolf and the dog can both detect your state of arousal, and are both seemingly more accurate about deception than are most humans. Like the wolf, I only desire to deceive those who wish to do harm,
Otherwise like both wolves and dogs, eager amicability (the adult wolf is careful, but still seeks it in the mutual bonds it craves) is important as the way of living.
The subject is complex, but look to the wolf in order to see yourself . What you feel about him will tell you your strengths and weaknesses.
Imagine how long , for how many millennia, human wolf clans knew this!
Knowledge is not linear – much has been lost, and can only be found again with careful eager tolerance and amicability.