The special bond that unites dogs and humans seems to have its roots in the distant past , in a specific common evolutionary stage that has somehow inextricably linked the two species. This seems to be the reason why Fido knows how to decode from an early age like no other animal – be it a domesticated wolf or a chimpanzee – the communications that come from man.

I study

A Duke University study recently published in the journal Current Biology compares the behavior of forty-four dog pups and thirty-seven wolf pups between the ages of five and eighteen weeks .

The aim is to better understand – starting from the reactions of both species in the face of interaction with humans – how domestication has influenced the cognitive abilities of the dog. 

The puppies, all Labradors or Golden Retrievers or mixes of the two breeds, were undergoing training and most were bred by the nonprofit Canine Companions for Independence .Like the other puppies, they engaged in sporadic human interactions throughout the day and were still under the tutelage of their canine mom . 

The young gray wolves , on the other hand, came from the Wildlife Science Center, an animal sanctuary located in Stacy, Minnesota, had been separated from their mother ten or eleven days after their birth and were placed in the care of humans around the clock. , seven days out of seven. 

Although the dog has in fact evolved from the wolf – and is therefore a close relative – the observed behavioral differences are consistent, especially as regards the interpretation of human communications.

Dogs versus domesticated wolves, research results

If the two species , in fact, are comparably attracted to familiar objects and behave in a similar way on non-social measures of memory and inhibitory control, the puppies of dogs show greatly enhanced cooperative-communication skills. 

In particular, research shows that dogs :

• they are more attracted to humans;
• they are more exuberant, less shy and more friendly ;
• they read human gestures more skillfully;
• they seek more eye contact with humans.

These answers seem to refute the results that emerged in previous analyzes , according to which both dog and wolf pups are instinctively able to read human gestures. 

What the Duke University research seems to show is, on the contrary, that dogs have become more flexible over time and in the various evolutionary stages in using the aforementioned skills.

Skills that would have been inherited to communicate better and cooperatively – from the very beginning of development – with a new social partner, previously feared. 

Better than chimpanzees

The ability to understand human language so effectively is a skill that not even our closest relative in the animal kingdom – the chimpanzee – can match .

” Chimpanzees can outperform dogs in many things ,” said Brian Hare , scholar and part of the research team. ” But they are not particularly good at understanding communicative and cooperative gestures. ” 

Even starting from this evidence, Hare and his colleagues are inclined to espouse the so-called “domestication hypothesis ,” which is the idea that in dogs the ability to understand human gestures is an inherent evolutionary trait rather than something learned by individual animals as they mature.