(ORDO NEWS) — A new study has confirmed that baby dogs – unlike cats and wolves – show a higher social orientation towards humans and tend to “sync” with them.
Hungarian ethologists from the Lorand Eötvös University in Budapest – the authors of many studies on the behavior of domestic animals – conducted another experiment and found that dog puppies, unlike kittens and wolf cubs, spontaneously imitate human actions, even if they are not given treats for this.
Young individuals of species whose parents care for their offspring for a long time tend to imitate the actions of older members of the group, since social learning affects fitness and helps to develop important skills faster.
However, authors of previous studies studying this type of behavior in animals usually motivated the subjects with food. Whether they reproduced the actions of a person in the absence of a reward has not yet been clear.
Ethologists from Budapest decided to fill this gap. Their goal was to test the ability of dog puppies, kittens and wolf cubs to spontaneously (without prior training) imitate the experimenter.
The tests were carried out in the university laboratory or at the owners’ home.
“We tested 42 puppies of dogs of various breeds (mean age 13.4 ± 1.7 weeks), 39 kittens (age 13.8 ± 2.6 weeks) and eight cubs (age 12 ± 2.8 weeks), five of which were from the same litter.
All companion animals were socialized, lived in human families. The owners raised wolf cubs after they were separated from their mothers in the first 12 days after birth, ”the scientists said.
The animals were allowed to get to know the experimenter while the owners were explained the procedure.
The pets were allowed to move freely around the room while the host and owner talked and briefly greeted the subject as they approached. The introduction lasted about ten minutes.
During the tests, two items were used – a small white plastic box and a Wobbler toy. Everything that happened was recorded on a video camera.
First, the owner carefully held the animal at a distance of 1.3 meters from the experimenter, who was sitting opposite.
The subject was released and allowed to inspect the object, noting whether he touched it and with what part of the body – nose or paw.
Then the test leader himself touched the toy with his hand or touched it with his nose.
At the same time, he called the pet by name or attracted his attention in another way (for example, smacked his lips) and said: “Look what I’m doing!”
The human action was the opposite of what the animal demonstrated at the familiarization stage.
Then the subject was released again and watched how he would interact with the object. The test was repeated twice, followed by a ten-minute break.
Then the animals participated in three more similar tests with a toy and a box, only now the objects could move.
As a result, scientists have identified species-specific differences in the behavior of the three species: dog puppies were more likely to pay attention to what was happening than wolf cubs and kittens, and were more likely to touch an object with their paw if a person touched it with their hand.
However, it was the kittens and wolf cubs that followed the object when it was moved with the help of a transparent fishing line, without the participation of the experimenter.
According to the researchers, this suggests that, unlike dogs, cubs of a cat and a wolf were attracted more by the movement of the object itself than by a person.
“The increased likelihood that a puppy of dogs will interact with a toy or box after a person can be explained by increased stimulus. We observed a similar trend in wolf cubs, but not in kittens.
Unlike dog puppies and, to some extent, wolf cubs, kittens rarely interacted with the object, their motivation did not increase even after the person interacted with the object, ”the authors of the article noted.
During familiarization when the animals were free to move around the room subjects who did pay attention to the object almost always touched it with their noses.
This means that when puppies touched a toy and/or a box with their paw, it was precisely the imitation of a person, and not their personal spontaneous way of interacting with the object, the scientists concluded.
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