"Dogs dumbed down by domestication."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37569783/ns/technology_and_science-science/#storyContinued
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Dogs are now so dependent upon people that they fail certain basic intelligence tests that wolves and wild dogs ace, according to new research.
The findings provide evidence that humans, through domestication of canines, have caused dogs to lose their non-social problem-solving skills. The loss in skills appears to be "hardwired" genetically into dogs, helping to explain why homeless dogs struggle to survive.
"Often feral dogs survive by taking advantage of human leftovers or domestic livestock," lead author Bradly Philip Smith told Discovery News, adding that the "leftovers" could be things like garbage scrounged from dumps or the occasional food handouts.
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"It would take a lot of generations of successful dogs to start fostering any such cognitive abilities required for survival in the wild," Smith, a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of South Australia, added.
For the study, accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior, he and colleague Carla Litchfield put domesticated dogs and dingoes through a problem-solving test known as "the detour task." Dingoes are also domesticated dogs, but through many generations, they have adapted to life in the Australian outback. As a result, dingoes have evolved more "wild" features and instincts that distinguish them from other dogs.
The detour task assesses spatial problem-solving abilities because it requires the animal subjects to travel around a transparent barrier to obtain a reward, which in this case was a bowl of food. The barrier here was a V-shaped fence with detour doors that either swung inward or outward.
The food bowl was placed inside or just outside the intersection point of the "V" barrier, while each subject on the opposing side of the barrier. The test runs were all conducted at the Dingo Discovery Center in Victoria, Australia.
All of the dingoes found the food reward in about 20 seconds, taking proper advantage of the detour doors whenever possible. Domesticated dogs, on the other hand, looked puzzled and confused. They pawed at the fence, dug at it, and even barked, likely out of frustration and to call for help.
Prior research determined that wolves, like dingoes, ace this test.
"Wolves will outperform dogs on any problem-solving tasks that are non-social," Smith said. "Dogs are great at social tasks — communicating with humans, using humans as tools, learning from humans via observation — whereas wolves are much better at general problem solving."
He said few cognitive studies have been performed on wolves and other wild canids, but the handful that have been done suggest wolves are better than domesticated dogs at working independently and at using tools, such as ropes.
Rob Appleby, a researcher in the Wildlife-Human Ecology and Behavior Research Lab at Griffith University, told Discovery News that he agrees with the conclusions and found the latest evidence to be "compelling."
"(The new study) suggests that there may be cognitive differences between wild and domestic canids in terms of how each might approach solving such a problem," he said, "potentially relating to their differing evolutionary histories."
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What do you guys think? ~
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Dogs are now so dependent upon people that they fail certain basic intelligence tests that wolves and wild dogs ace, according to new research.
The findings provide evidence that humans, through domestication of canines, have caused dogs to lose their non-social problem-solving skills. The loss in skills appears to be "hardwired" genetically into dogs, helping to explain why homeless dogs struggle to survive.
"Often feral dogs survive by taking advantage of human leftovers or domestic livestock," lead author Bradly Philip Smith told Discovery News, adding that the "leftovers" could be things like garbage scrounged from dumps or the occasional food handouts.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here
"It would take a lot of generations of successful dogs to start fostering any such cognitive abilities required for survival in the wild," Smith, a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of South Australia, added.
For the study, accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior, he and colleague Carla Litchfield put domesticated dogs and dingoes through a problem-solving test known as "the detour task." Dingoes are also domesticated dogs, but through many generations, they have adapted to life in the Australian outback. As a result, dingoes have evolved more "wild" features and instincts that distinguish them from other dogs.
The detour task assesses spatial problem-solving abilities because it requires the animal subjects to travel around a transparent barrier to obtain a reward, which in this case was a bowl of food. The barrier here was a V-shaped fence with detour doors that either swung inward or outward.
The food bowl was placed inside or just outside the intersection point of the "V" barrier, while each subject on the opposing side of the barrier. The test runs were all conducted at the Dingo Discovery Center in Victoria, Australia.
All of the dingoes found the food reward in about 20 seconds, taking proper advantage of the detour doors whenever possible. Domesticated dogs, on the other hand, looked puzzled and confused. They pawed at the fence, dug at it, and even barked, likely out of frustration and to call for help.
Prior research determined that wolves, like dingoes, ace this test.
"Wolves will outperform dogs on any problem-solving tasks that are non-social," Smith said. "Dogs are great at social tasks — communicating with humans, using humans as tools, learning from humans via observation — whereas wolves are much better at general problem solving."
He said few cognitive studies have been performed on wolves and other wild canids, but the handful that have been done suggest wolves are better than domesticated dogs at working independently and at using tools, such as ropes.
Rob Appleby, a researcher in the Wildlife-Human Ecology and Behavior Research Lab at Griffith University, told Discovery News that he agrees with the conclusions and found the latest evidence to be "compelling."
"(The new study) suggests that there may be cognitive differences between wild and domestic canids in terms of how each might approach solving such a problem," he said, "potentially relating to their differing evolutionary histories."
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What do you guys think? ~
Comments
I do feel though that a wild canine and a domestic dog do have different problem solving abilities, but that one is not more dumb than the other. It's more like one is better at solving some things, while the other is better at solving other things.
On another note, check out the Dingo Discovery Center website, more specifically their dingo colony: http://dingodiscovery.net/colony.html
Don't they kind of look like oddly shaped shibas or possibly other NK?
I read something similar to that when I was doing some research on wolves a few years ago. In that test they also used food and a barrier. The wolves got the food fairly quickly, most of the dogs didn't get it and the ones that did took a lot longer than the wolves. It was a long time ago so unfortunatly I don't remember what book I found it in.
I agree with Calia. I don't think one animal is "dumber" than the other, they just have different problem solving abilities. And it's true the article didn't really give many statistics. Calia also has a point on if the Dingo's had done the activity before, than they would obviously have an advantage. Plus the dog breed does play a role. I can imagine if I did that with a NK vs. my mom's pug the NK would get the food a lot faster. So I can see that whatever dog they used would play a huge role in the outcome of that experiment.
Neat article though :D
Didn't we learn this with that test they did in the 80s with a wolf and a dog where they had to figure out how to get some meat out of a crate that was tied to a string or something. The wolf would eventually pull the string and get the food while the dog would eventually give up and look to the human for assistance. Old news.
Also, why would you want a domestic dog to be as smart as a wild canine? The point of domesticating the dog, or (if you subscribe to the theory that dogs domesticated themselves) at least the point of us artificially selecting the domestic dog to further sculpt them, was to create an animal that could work with/for us... Wild canine don't do that - which is why they are wild and not domestic. Domestic dogs do do that, which is why they are domestic and not wild.
Lets face the facts here... If dogs were as intelligent as wolves they wouldn't be very interested in working for us, and therefore they wouldn't be domesticated.
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That told me that he always knew how, but his motivation to do so was not always high enough.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p17s02-sten.html
A few paragraphs from the article:
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At five weeks, each cub was placed in a room containing an adult and the student who had raised the cub. Both sat motionless. But while the wolf cubs merely sniffed both humans before climbing into the student's lap to sleep, the puppies yipped at their caregivers, licking their hands and trying to establish contact.
Three months later, the canines were given the opportunity to try to remove a piece of meat from under a cage by pulling on a rope in the presence of their caregiver. Dogs and wolves both mastered this promptly. Then the rope was anchored, making it impossible to obtain the meat. The dogs tried a couple of times, then turned to their masters for assistance or cues. The wolves ignored their caregivers, yanking on the rope until exhausted.
"The wolves ... were only interested in the meat," notes Miklosi. "The dogs were of course interested in the meat, but knew that one way to get it might be to figure out what the human wants them to do."
To Csanyi, this proves that dogs have acquired an innate ability to pay attention to people, and thus to communicate and work with them. This is a skill that wolves don't assume even when raised from birth to learn it.
Dogs are "very motivated to cooperate with and behave like people," says Csanyi. "That's why dogs can do things no other animal can do."
I think about this in terms of how dogs are rated for intelligence. Dogs that are trainable--ie. malleable to human desires--are always rated very very highly. Basenjis, for example, often end up at the very bottom of the list (Shibas would too, its just the raters have never heard of Shibas). This is ridiculous, of course. Basenjis are very smart, as are Shibas, but they're just not very trainable because they're not interested in figuring out what people want.
Thinking about this test, I think it might even take my Shibas some time to figure it out, because they are used to demanding certain things: pawing on something gets them what they want: ie to go in or out, and I've already seen that they do that sometimes even when I'm not around to open or close the door (or am refusing to do so) because they know that most of the time it works. I imagine they'd try that a door first, but if it opened at all, they'd bolt right through it!
And yes, the Dingos do look Shibas....I really believe there is a common ancestor there, given that now people think the Dingos came from an Asian wolf, and there are so many similarities in looks....
And yes, Lisa - I have long maintained that the smartest dog isn't the one that will do something over and over and over again just because we asked it to! The Afghan Hounds certainly deserve more credit.
Dogs that are trainable--ie. malleable to human desires--are always rated very very highly. Basenjis, for example, often end up at the very bottom of the list (Shibas would too, its just the raters have never heard of Shibas). This is ridiculous, of course. Basenjis are very smart, as are Shibas, but they're just not very trainable because they're not interested in figuring out what people want.
Isn't this test the exact opposite of what you describe above? And on that thought line, in theory, wouldn't one be able to assume a Shiba or a Basenj would perform this test better than a more biddable breed like a Bulldog (for example) as this test doesn't require a dog to be trained and is actually measuring their problem solving skills?
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One thing that always bugs me about these types of tests is the lack of background info on the domesticated dog they choose to run in the test. We all know that many of our domesticated companion dogs have a high degree of learned helplessness. Anyone who lives with an Akita or Shiba know how easy it is to (probably inadvertently) train a dog to depend on their owners to perform a specific task while that dog is perfectly capable of performing that task on their own. Add some stubbornness to the mix (hello Akita owners, I'm talking to you) and you have a recipe of ingredients that can make a dog look rather stupid at times - when in fact they are not, they're just acting as you have taught them to act and being very stubborn about it.
Point is, how do we know for sure that the domesticated dogs in these studies hadn't already acquired a certain level of learned helplessness? These domesticated dogs would need to be completely "green" from a training perspective to run in this test without a biased - and that by its self would probably skew the results of the test as a green dog would have already lived its life w/o any training and therefore would have probably learned to problem solve on their own in the same way the Dingos used in this test has done so.
And from that line of thought, I have to wonder what the results of this test would be if they used a feral dog, lets say a feral bulldog, that had lived to be a feral adult dog... I wonder how that dog would do in this test when compared to the Dingo or other wild canine? I bet the results would be similar because the Bulldog would have learned to problem solve for survival and their value system would be different than a companion dog (a pet dog doesn't value food has highly as a wild/feral dog would).
Point is, a lot of the basic training we do with our dogs ("manner training" I've heard it called) teaches our dogs not to problem solve... Because problem solving (like jumping on the counter or opening a cabinet door to get food) is considered rude and bad behavior. So is it our training of the dogs that make them "dumbed down" our our selection? Or is it both?
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Isn't many of the positive reinforcement techniques reliant on getting your dog to figure out on their own how to get the treat? To an extent there is some problem solving abilities needed in the dog in order to get the desired results.
On another note, some dogs desire to get what they want will cause them to try to find other ways/opportunities to get it, whether it be to wait for the obstacle (What happens to your sandwich when you leave the room) to leave or another way around it. Tetsu always tries to get at the cat food in the closet, and I had found that no matter what kind of obstacles I put in his way, he would always find a way to get in the closet (even if it meant walking away from the closet to find an "entrance").
I do agree that many dogs "suffer" from learned helplessness, but I think that that is more on a case by case basis and not dogs as a whole. Chihuahuas for example, are often used as a purse accessory. Those that were raised as such don't know what to do when they have all 4 paws on the ground, and often times stand there and wait to be back in the purse (their comfort zone). But, treat a chihuahua like an actual dog, and they'll actually act like a dog. They are capable of walking a pretty decent distance for their size, and have the balls to challenge dogs 20x their size.
They don't have any statistics listed....what breed of dog was used? What age were the dogs? How were the dogs trained previously? [ ie: positive reinforcement, or positive punishment? ]
My point in posting this wasn't really about the article / study itself...but it was about a point that Brad brought up earlier:
Lets face the facts here... If dogs were as intelligent as wolves they wouldn't be very interested in working for us, and therefore they wouldn't be domesticated.
I wonder if increased biddability has a correlation with lower intelligence? Or is it, that "helplessness" that we're talking about?
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Ultimately, I'm really sick of these articles / studies trying to compare wolves to domestic dogs. They might as well be comparing apples & oranges. A wolf is not a dog, a dog is not a wolf, no matter how similar their DNA is. & no matter what study they try to do, the odds will never be even. What we call "dog" is far too varied and different i & of itsself to make a study with any solid backing. ~
It was late when I posted and I don't think I was making as much sense as I meant to!
Interesting, isn't it, that a lot of our training is about teaching dogs not to problem solve....at least in terms of working things out for themselves (I CAN reach that sandwich as soon as the human leaves the room!) And I've had little success with getting the Shibas to forget that kind of problem solving! They're good at it!
but they do have the stubborn learned helplessness, which I think isn't learned helplessness--in their case--so much as sheer stubbornness. For example: Toby is pawing at the downstairs door to come in. The upstairs door is open. He could go up there and come in, but he continues to paw at the door and stare at me pointedly. We both know he knows he could go upstairs, but he wants ME to open the door that is in front of him. I don't think of it as learned helplessness in these situations so much as a kind of stubbornness/willfullness to have his way. (and perhaps I'm anthromorphizing too much here. Perhaps he's forgotten the upstairs door is open. But I've seen him do this so often that I have to think he is demanding his way.
Anyway, the bigger point is yes, why exactly this obsession to compare dogs to wolves? We don't see articles comparing dogs to, say, coyotes or African hunting dogs, or hyenas or foxes. Meaning why the obsession with comparing one member of the canine family to another but only these two? (I know it has to do with the closer match in dna--I guess--but wouldn't some of the other wild dogs be pretty close too?)
And you know, I'm also kind of tired of the glorification of wolves (god knows I don't want to go back to the bad old days of demonization either though!). I mean, why is always wolves that are so smart? Isn't it kind of obvious that the animals need very different kinds of intelligence and skills to survive in their worlds?
Hrrrrmph!
Apart from not know which breeds were used, we don't know when the dog was last fed (and I'm assuming the dog is used to being fed at regular intervals). That can influence the lengths the dog is willing to go to get the food.
A hungry dog or a dog that has been living in the streets for a couple of months would level the playing field, as it would be more needy and, very likely, more tenacious.