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Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.

ABSTRACT: When facing an unsolvable problem, dogs exhibit spontaneous human-oriented behaviours (e.g. looking at the human partner, gaze alternations between the human and the target) sooner and for longer than domestic cats and hand-raised wolves. These behaviours have been interpreted as interspecific communicative acts aimed to initiate interaction. Here, we compare the emergence of human-oriented behaviours (e.g. orientation towards humans, orientation alternations, vocalizations) in similarly raised family dogs and miniature pigs utilising an unsolvable task paradigm which consists of Baseline (no task), Solvable and Unsolvable phases. Relative to the Baseline phase in which both species showed human-oriented behaviours to a similar extent, during the Unsolvable phase dogs showed more and pigs showed less such behaviours. Species-predispositions in communicative behaviour may explain why dogs have a higher inclination than pigs to initiate interspecific interactions with humans in problem-solving contexts.

SUBMITTER: Perez Fraga P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7829225 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.

Pérez Fraga Paula P Gerencsér Linda L Lovas Melinda M Újváry Dóra D Andics Attila A

Animal cognition 20200717 1

When facing an unsolvable problem, dogs exhibit spontaneous human-oriented behaviours (e.g. looking at the human partner, gaze alternations between the human and the target) sooner and for longer than domestic cats and hand-raised wolves. These behaviours have been interpreted as interspecific communicative acts aimed to initiate interaction. Here, we compare the emergence of human-oriented behaviours (e.g. orientation towards humans, orientation alternations, vocalizations) in similarly raised ...[more]

PMID: 32681198

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Project description:Despite being closely related, dogs perform worse than wolves in independent problem-solving tasks. These differences in problem-solving performance have been attributed to dogs' greater reliance on humans, who are usually present when problem-solving tasks are presented. However, more fundamental motivational factors or behavioural traits such as persistence, motor diversity and neophobia may also be responsible for differences in task performance. Hence, to better understand what drives the differences between dogs' and wolves' problem-solving performance, it is essential to test them in the absence of humans. Here, we tested equally raised and kept dogs and wolves with two unsolvable tasks, a commonly used paradigm to study problem-solving behaviour in these species. Differently from previous studies, we ensured no humans were present in the testing situation. We also ensured that the task was unsolvable from the start, which eliminated the possibility that specific manipulative behaviours were reinforced. This allowed us to measure both persistence and motor diversity more accurately. In line with previous studies, we found wolves to be more persistent than dogs. We also found motor diversity to be linked to persistence and persistence to be linked to contact latency. Finally, subjects were consistent in their performance between the two tasks. These results suggest that fundamental differences in motivation to interact with objects drive the differences in the performance of dogs and wolves in problem-solving tasks. Since correlates of problem-solving success, that is persistence, neophobia, and motor diversity are influenced by a species' ecology, our results support the socioecological hypothesis, which postulates that the different ecological niches of the two species (dogs have evolved to primarily be scavengers and thrive on and around human refuse, while wolves have evolved to primarily be group hunters and have a low hunting success rate) have, at least partly, shaped their behaviours.

Project description:Cooperation is only beneficial if the outcome is equally shared between individuals involved in the cooperative interaction. A mechanism to limit the development of unequal cooperation is inequity aversion, the negative reaction to unequal treatment. While inequity aversion has been studied extensively across many animal species, it remains unclear whether inequity aversion elicited in experimental settings is directed to the cooperative partner animal or rather to the experimenter distributing the rewards unequally. In the current study we aimed to further investigate whether the presence of an experimenter distributing rewards is essential in order to elicit inequity aversion in dogs. We tested 22 dog dyads in an inequity task, requiring dyads to alternately press a buzzer in order to receive rewards of equal or unequal value. We manipulated the extent of the experimenter's involvement in the task: in the experimenter-present version an experimenter gave a command to the dogs to press the buzzer and delivered the rewards by pushing the bowls into the dogs' enclosure. In contrast, in the experimenter-absent version, no experimenter was visible and the buzzer and bowls were moved from behind a curtain. We found that dogs did not respond to the unequal treatment regardless of the experimenter's involvement in the task. Nonetheless, we found that dogs based their behavior on frustration and social facilitation in the experimenter-absent version of the task, suggesting that a social interaction with an experimenter may be one aspect necessary to elicit inequity aversion. One potential explanation for the absence of inequity aversion in the experimenter-present version of the task might be the reward delivery method. Using separate sets of reward bowls for each dog instead of a shared bowl could have removed a potentially important competitive aspect (i.e., shared resource) from the inequity paradigm. In addition, delivering the rewards via bowls, rather than directly handing the rewards to the dogs, might have caused dogs to perceive the task as less cooperative. These results suggest that both the presence of an experimenter causing inequity and the inclusion of a competitive or cooperative element in the task may be basic requirements for eliciting inequity aversion.

Dataset Information

Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.

Publications

Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.

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