The dog is considered man’s best friend because of the closeness and affection it has shown to humans since a wolf was domesticated 15,000 years ago and gave rise to all dog breeds. Now, a new study in the journal Ecology and Evolution shows that This devotion to the human race can manifest itself in the person himself. wolves, a genre that traditionally evokes fear in society.
This is what researchers at Stockholm University in Sweden believe they discovered after examining 10 wolves and 12 dogs in a behavior test specifically designed to measure attachment behaviors towards humans. During this test, 23-week-old wolves could distinguish between a familiar person and a stranger as spontaneously as dogs.and showed more proximity seeking and proximity behavior towards the known person.
Also, this person’s presence had a calming effect for wolves, calming them in stressful situations. These findings are based on accumulating evidence that contradicts the hypothesis that the skills needed to develop attachment to humans emerged in dogs only after humans domesticated them at least 15,000 years ago.
“We thought this needed to be tested extensively,” said Christina Hansen Wheat, professor of ethology at Stockholm University, Sweden.
Hansen Wheat is interested in understanding how domestication affects behavior. To examine this, he and his team They raised wolves and puppies from 10 days old and put them through various behavioral tests. In one such test, a familiar person and a stranger took turns entering and exiting the testing room to create a somewhat awkward and stressful situation for the animal.
The theory behind this test, which was originally developed to assess attachment in human infants, is: By creating this unstable environment, attachment behaviors (such as intimacy seeking) will be stimulated.
In essence, what the researchers were looking for in this “strange situation test” was whether wolves and dogs could distinguish between a familiar person and a stranger. Well, showed more affection and spent more time greeting and physical contact with the known person than with the unknown person. If wolves and dogs did the same, it would show that this ability is not unique to dogs, that is, it is not specifically developed in dogs.
“This is exactly what we saw,” Hansen Wheat explained. “It was very clear that the wolves, like dogs, preferred the familiar to the stranger. But perhaps even more interesting was that while the dogs were not particularly affected by the test situation, the wolves were affected. They were taking a step back and forward in the evidence room.”
“However, what was remarkable was that the pacing behavior stopped when a familiar person who had been with wolves all his life re-entered the testing room. the person in question acted as a social stress buffer for the wolves. I don’t think this has been shown for wolves before, and it also adds to the strong bond between the animals and the known person.”
Hansen Wheat adds that the similarities between dogs and wolves can tell us something about the origins of the behaviors we see in our dogs. And while it’s surprising that wolves could connect with a human in this way, Wheat thinks it makes sense in retrospect: “Wolves with attachment to humans could have had a selective advantage. “It’s in the early stages of dog domestication,” he says.
Hansen Wheat will now continue to work with data he and his team have collected over three years by breeding wolves and dogs under the same conditions to learn more about behavioral differences and similarities.
Reference work: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.9299
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