from Hacker News

Dogs, but Not Wolves, Use Humans as Tools

by hyp0 on 1/21/15, 3:10 AM with 73 comments

• by tessierashpool on 1/21/15, 4:16 PM

  when I was a kid, we had a pet dog who turned out to be half-wolf. when we learned he was half-wolf, we treated him differently, and a ton of serious behavioral problems vanished instantly.

  these researchers had their dogs and wolves treated identically, and concluded that "even after being raised by humans, wolves simply do not see humans as potential social partners."

  but my interpretation is that they learned that wolves, after being raised by humans as if they were dogs, do not see humans as potential social partners. and this distinction matters, because my family's pet dog/wolf saw us all as his subordinates, until we learned the different way to act around a wolf.

  if you show a wolf tons and tons of affection, like it was a dog, it thinks you're trying to kiss its ass and take a subordinate position to it.

  all these researchers really learned here, in my opinion, was that if you communicate to a wolf that you are not to be taken seriously as a partner, it will not take you seriously as a partner.

  I think the possibility absolutely remains open that researchers who had bothered to do their homework first might be able to produce results where the wolves looked to the humans for help just as often as the dogs did.

  if you baby a wolf in the way that we baby dogs in 2015, you are probably not creating an entirely realistic simulation of the context within which wolves and humans first began collaborating.

• by rebootthesystem on 1/21/15, 7:40 AM

  I've raised and trained working line German Shepherd Dogs (GSD's) most of my adult life. The degree of communication you can have with a dog is sometimes incredible. Yes, they tell you what they want and figure out ways to communicate what they need. Very soon you develop a mutual "language" of sorts. We use hand signals for everything (as well as spoken commands). So I can be at a really noisy outdoor setting and tell them what to do without uttering a word.

  They also learn which member of the family is best for each need. For example, they learned that cuddling-up with my young daughter is always a sure bet, they rarely ask my oldest son for that level of attention.

  There's also the empathy. I've seen some amazing things, like a female GSD jumping up on the bed to cuddle-up with my wife when she got a phone call with bad news. It's freaky.

  They know they are not allowed in my office and stop and sit or lay down at the door. But they can also read when I am receptive to them coming in for a quick hug. They actually seem to understand when I need a break. It's an amazing relationship that I couldn't do without.

• by bambax on 1/21/15, 4:18 PM

  As described, the experience doesn't really show that dogs use humans as tools, but rather that they look to their face for hints as to how to behave.

  This is the almost-universal behavior of low-status individuals to high-status ones (in a boardroom everyone looks at the boss to know how to react to a joke).

  So it could mean, not that dogs "use humans" but rather that they recognize humans (and specifically their trainer) as the leader of their pack, which wolves do not.

  It would be interesting to do this experiment again with dogs and a human that they absolutely don't recognize as a leader (a toddler that they have never seen before, for example).

  My guess is, if there are two humans in the room, a "recognized leader" and a "recognized non-leader", and if the non-leader knows how to solve the riddle, and the leader does not, then the riddle will never be solved because the dog will never seek the help of the non-leader.

• by johnloeber on 1/21/15, 6:30 AM

  Huh, interesting. This makes me think about domestication of animals: it's not just about us training or imposing our will on animals, but it's also about animals understanding that they can use us as tools, as the article puts it.

  I say this in jest, but it sort of makes you wonder about who is using whom. Oftentimes, I notice how pets (esp. cats[0]) are looked after 24/7 by their owners, groomed, given food, shelter, etc. and pretty much do nothing but continuously solicit pleasure. Traditionally, we like to think of animals as serving humans, but in a case like this, isn't the opposite true?

  [0] I note that cats are not fully domesticated animals. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/man-cat-...

• by sharkweek on 1/21/15, 6:18 AM

  My own anecdotal proof of this being true -

  Wife and I have the seemingly dumbest labrador in the world. We adopted him at an old age (8-ish) so we didn't get the chance to raise or train him ourselves.

  But after we picked him up, it really only took about two days for him to settle in and learn exactly where everything was that he wanted, and he quickly learned how to signal when something was needed. He knew exactly WHAT we were good for, whether that be feeding, letting him out, play, back scratches that he can't reach, etc.

  We were super impressed with his ability to learn a daily routine too. "When they get home, they feed me so I'll stand by my bowl, then after I'm done they play with me so I'll grab my toy, then they take me on a walk so I'll stand by my leash"

• by CurtMonash on 1/21/15, 9:39 AM

  Cats communicate with humans a little bit, but much less than dogs do. For example, my cat, known on Twitter as the SOFS (Small Orange Furry Sociopath), has developed a very small "vocabulary" of sounds and actions to communicate with my wife and me. But really, he's not clear and consistent about anything more sophisticated than "Pay attention to me!" or "Stop touching me there!" And there isn't a single word I'm sure he understands, although I lean toward the affirmative in the case of his name.

  I.e., his side of communication adds up to no more than what in a dog might be a couple of tones of bark, a fast tailwag, and the grabbing of a leash to indicate enthusiasm for the of a walk.

• by mkorfmann on 1/21/15, 1:56 PM

  When I hear about Hawking or Musk etc. being feared of AI, I always think about how cats & dogs could have also been scared facing human evolution. But yet here they still are, obviously smarter than us since they don't do shit but sleep all day ;).

• by tarice on 1/21/15, 4:35 PM

  If you're wondering why the wolves weren't given the impossible food challenge at 5 months, the author notes in the comments:

  > @K9TrainerTina: they were, actually. however, the 5 month old wolf pups mostly just went to sleep after initially failing to get the food, so they were excluded from the analysis.

• by iamgoat on 1/21/15, 11:16 AM

  This same group is covered in the Nova episode Dogs Decoded (available on Netflix US): http://documentarystorm.com/dogs-decoded/ (starting from 31:11)

  I'm not sure if it's this episode or some other documentary, but I remember seeing the food experiment as well. Where wolves would not look to humans for help.

• by skazka16 on 1/21/15, 6:12 AM

  That's interesting. Just realized that I'm a tool when my kid is crying.

• by putzdown on 1/21/15, 1:06 PM

  It's an interesting article, but its use of "tool" is spurious. It appears in the title and is plunked down in front of us on the last line, but nowhere is the case made that dogs' greater social acceptance of humans amounts to anything like tool use. Great article; too bad about "tool."

• by kristofferR on 1/21/15, 6:57 AM

  This experiement was featured in the documentary Dogs Decoded, here: http://vimeo.com/19472436#at=1870

  The whole documentary is worth watching, but the fox domenstication part is especially interesting.

• by antimagic on 1/21/15, 10:46 AM

  The experiment was repeated with cats, however when the plate was placed out of their reach they simply glared balefully at the slave^H^H^H^H^H human until the error was corrected.

• by zcdziura on 1/21/15, 2:49 PM

  It's actually quite funny to see this "in the wild". My parents have a two-year-old Golden Retriever that they've had since he was eight weeks old. From a very young age, he mastered the "puppy face" that melts my mother's heart and compels her to do whatever he wants: giving him food, letting him outside, cuddling, sleeping on the couch, play time, sleeping on the bed, whatever.

  He's a naughty puppy, but dammit if we don't love him unconditionally!

• by yawz on 1/21/15, 4:12 PM

  I wonder if dog's is a predisposition towards "humans" in particular or would they also socialize with other animals such as the chimps' for instance.

• by cel1ne on 1/21/15, 10:13 AM

  I onced talked to a environmental engineering student in Norway who was a lumberjack and hunter earlier (that education system!).

  He told me that the main problem with wolves was that they are really aggressive against hunting dogs. If you split up too far from your dogs chances are high that a near wolf-pack will come, kill them in a blitz-action and run away.

• by cLeEOGPw on 1/21/15, 11:00 AM

  > Despite the fact that they had been fully socialized, the wolves treated each of the situations as physical problems rather than social ones.

  Same problem arises in many humans.

• by jussij on 1/21/15, 2:03 PM

  > Only in this case, the humans were the tools, and the dogs the tool-users.

  And this is exactly why breeds like Chihuahua, Poodles and Labradoodles have done so well.

  These types of dogs living in a Darwinist world, have no right to survive, but thanks to their human relationships they are thriving.

  The big question, is this the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the human?