Many dogs are naturals when it comes to showing love. The ability to show attachment behavior toward human caregivers is found in wolves.
10 wolves and 12 dogs were tested in a behavioral test designed to measure attachment behaviors in canids. The wolves discriminated between a familiar person and a stranger just as well as dogs did, and showed more proximity seeking and affiliative behaviors towards the familiar person.
The wolves were soothed by the presence of a familiar person. Evidence shows that the ability to form attachment with humans did not arise in dogs until 15,000 years ago.
There was a need to thoroughly test this. It is appropriate to entertain the idea that if variation in human-directed attachment behavior exists in wolves, this behavior could have been a target for earlyselective pressures exerted during dog domestication.
Dr. Wheat wants to understand how domestication affects behavior. She and her team raised wolves and dogs from the age of 10 days and put them through various behavioral tests. A familiar person and a stranger come in and out of a test room to create a strange situation for the animal. The theory behind the test is that the unstable environment will cause attachment behaviors to be stimulated.
The researchers wanted to know if the wolves and dogs could discriminate between people and strangers. They spent more time with the familiar person and showed more affection than the stranger. If wolves and dogs did the same thing it would show that this ability is not unique to dogs.
That was what we saw, says Dr. Wheat. The wolves preferred the familiar person over the stranger. The wolves were more affected by the test situation than the dogs were. The people were in the test room.
The pacing behavior stopped when the familiar person reentered the test room, which indicated that the familiar person was a social stress buffer for the wolves. I don't believe that this has ever been shown to be the case for wolves before, and I also think that there is a strong bond between animals and people.
There are similarities between dogs and wolves that can show us where the behavior comes from. She says it makes sense that wolves can connect with someone in this way.
She says wolves could have had an advantage in the early stages of dog domestication.
The data she and her team have collected over the course of three years will now be used to learn more about the behavioral differences and similarities of wolves and dogs.
More information: Christina Hansen Wheat et al, Human‐directed attachment behavior in wolves suggests standing ancestral variation for human–dog attachment bonds, Ecology and Evolution (2022). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.9299 Journal information: Ecology and Evolution
All Rights Reserved © 2024
