Wolves have an understanding of cause and effect

In the process of domestication, dogs may have lost the ability to grasp the connection between cause and effect, a new study has found.

Researchers investigating the reasoning skills of dogs and human-socialized wolves have discovered that the two canines had different approaches when searching for food after they’d been given hints about its location.

While dogs were unable to make the connection, the study revealed that wolves can – suggesting domestication may have altered dogs’ cognitive abilities.

‘The results of our study suggest that domestication has affected the causal understanding of our dogs,’ said Michelle Lampe from the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

‘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.’

In the study conducted at the Wolf Science Center of the Vetmeduni Vienna, the international team of researchers observed 14 dogs and 12 human-socialized wolves.

The team assessed their ability to make use of communicative cues, such as eye-contact and pointing gestures, along with behavioural cues, such as reaching out to the correct object without making eye-contact with the animal.

Then, the dogs and wolves were left to infer the location of the hidden food themselves based on causal cues, including the noise produced when the object containing the food is shaken.

‘Our study is unique as it does not only compare dogs and wolves living under identical conditions, with a same history and training regime,’ said Juliane Bräuer from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

‘We also compared dogs living in packs to pets living with their human families.’

The experiment revealed that both the dogs and wolves were able to follow the communicative cues to find the hidden food.

But, neither were able to choose the correct object without direct eye-contact.

Researchers investigating the reasoning skills of dogs and human-socialized wolves have discovered that the two canines had different approaches when searching for food after they’d been given hints about its location

The researchers also found that only the wolves were able to make the causal inferences, revealing they were able to understand cause and effect.

According to the team, the wolves’ ability to understand human eye contact was also a notable find, with implications on how the relationship between humans and dogs developed.

‘The wolves’ ability to understand human communicative cues may have facilitated domestication,’ said Zsófia Virányi from the Vetmeduni Vienna in Austria.

‘However, working with socialized wolves may have also impacted the results, as our animals are used to human contact.

‘This could mask differences between the dogs and wolves, such as that dogs learn more easily about human communication throughout their lives.’