Dog Emotion and Cognition will introduce you to the exciting new study of dog psychology, what the latest discoveries tell us about how dogs think and feel about us, and how we can use this new knowledge to further strengthen our relationship with our best friends.
Dog Cooperation, Part 1
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From the course by Duke University
Dog Emotion and Cognition
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From the lesson
Problems That Dogs Can and Cannot Solve
In this module, you will learn about the genius of dogs. Brilliant examples of the canine mind will be explored. Dogs seem to be capable of inferential reasoning using the "principle of exclusion" as well as learning new words by imitating humans. Next, Dr. Hare discusses dog's abilities to understand physical problem solving compared to other species (hint, this isn't most dog's strong suit). Last, he will discuss how dogs are not cooperative breeders, do have a relaxed social system, and are excellent hunting companions for humans.
Meet the Instructors
Brian HareAssociate Professor
Evolutionary Anthropology
So this lecture is all about dogs back in the pack.
And particularly what we're gonna look at or
we're gonna focus on is cooperation in dogs.
And we're gonna directly compare the social system of wolves to dogs.
I think there's a lot of interest in how similar dogs are to wolves.
And what might some of the differences be between the two species,
in terms of how they interact socially but even how they cooperate.
So, we're gonna walk through a comparison between the two species and
then talk a little bit about what might be the mechanism that allows
these species to be so successful working together.
So for the book, I think Chapter 8 really focuses on this in The Genius of Dogs.
If you are following along with the book, that would be where you'd wanna look.
And in Dognition, I think the empathy games are most relevant to what we
are going to talk about, particularly at the end of the lecture today.
Because the games that you play through Dognition are similar to the games
that we highlight as being important to dog, understanding dog operation.
And you can find out it in your dog, what they do.
Okay. Memory will also important because again,
one of things is important for a lot of these cooperative activities is memory.
Okay, so, the first thing that really stands out when you compare wolves and
dogs are lots of interesting differences.
So, wolves and dogs are different in a really important way
that is very similar when you think about how we talk about bonobos and chimpanzees.
Where bonobos are actually attracted to strangers,
whereas chimpanzees are intolerant of strangers.
It seems like wolves are a little bit like chimpanzees, or
actually a lot like chimpanzees.
They're very intolerant of strangers and in fact they can be very aggressive
towards strange pack members that might meet out as they're foraging.
Whereas dogs, they may be actually more like bonobos.
They're certainly not, often they're not, aggressive towards strange dogs.
That's why when you go out to the dog park they often will play with dogs they've
never met before.
And they might even be xenophilic, just like bonobos.
They might even be attracted to strangers,
more interested in playing with a dog they haven't played with before.
There's really no evidence that feral dogs, dogs that are living without
the impact of humans influencing their relationships, actually kill each other.
Certainly not at the rate that wolves do.
And I think as depicted here in this photo, one of the remarkable things that
dogs do, is they actually allow another dog to smell their genital region.
And that is something that wolves typically do not allow others to do.
They're trying to, it seems, hide information about themselves, and
they're very intolerant of that.
Whereas dogs are very tolerant of one another,
checking out each other in that way.
So, wolves not so happy to meet strangers,
whereas dogs seem to be much more tolerant.
Another way that dogs and wolves are really different from another,
is that wolves are really committed cooperative breeders.
That means there's a mating pair as many people are familiar,
who work together to raise offspring.
Yearlings sometimes stay behind and
that's how larger packs form and they'll help raise the siblings.
Feral dogs, again that live without impact from humans interfering with their social
relationships, they do not cooperatively breed.
A female dog will go off on her own and have her pups.
There is very little evidence that there are yearlings that help to stay, and
help raise dog puppies in any context, and males provide very little help.
In fact, there have been a few exceptions to that, and they're noted in
the literature, where actually a male dog did provision offspring.
And it was so surprising to the researchers that they made a big deal of
it in the paper.
So, dogs certainly not cooperative breeders, and
likely as a result of domestication.
Although there's a really interesting exception to this, which is dingoes
seem to mirror the social system of wolves,
here at least, based on what we know currently.
So I think it'd be really interesting to study dingo social systems more
especially, given that they might be sort of in between what we're seeing
in feral dogs that are the result of pet dogs escaping from homes.
And living around human communities, whereas dingoes have been
living without human interference for many, many, many generations.
So given that wolves are cooperative breeders, adults in the pack,
obviously they work together to feed and protect the offspring each year.
And as a result there's actually quite high survivorship.
Many of the pups survive, and especially when that's compared to feral dog mothers,
who lose the vast majority of their offspring.
The estimates I've seen are as few as 1% of feral dog puppies make it to their
first year, and that's just not a sustainable level of loss.
And it's clear that feral dog populations really struggle to have offspring survive,
and it's largely due to the fact that they are not breeding cooperatively
as best as the researchers who're studying this can tell.
So, another consequence of dogs not being cooperative breeders is, as I said before,
males are not helping protect or feed offspring.
There's really no one that stays behind in a den as the mother goes off to forage.
So, there's no one protecting those offspring.
And that's probably why they suffer so much mortality, cuz as they start getting
mobile and they leave the den, and they stay around the den,
there's no one to make alarm bark calls when there's a predator.
There's no one there to protect them from a predator.
So, they are easy prey.
Okay, so wolves are famously cooperative hunters.
They're successful at bringing down large prey when hunting together.
One interesting thing is there is very little experimental evidence with wolves
testing how they actually understand their roles when they're cooperating.
Do they actually understand they need the help of another individual to solve
certain problems?
And that they understand that certain individuals have different roles
when they're hunting or working together?
And that some individuals are more skilled than others?
That type of work has not been done yet.
It has been done with great apes, and
we know for instance that chimpanzees can solve all those types of problems.
It would be really neat to do that kind of work with wolves to see what they do.
Dogs obviously are not cooperative hunters, with the exception with us,
potentially.
There's no evidence in the literature that I could find of feral dogs
actively hunting together with any level of coordination.
And in general, feral dogs really rely on scavenging off humans.
Again, Dingo standing out as a potential exception here.
There's plenty of evidence for dingoes, preying on different marsupials.
Of course, marsupials are in many cases so vulnerable, that it's not that
they are necessarily preying on animals that are able to really defend themselves.
With the exception of some of the larger kangaroos or wallabies, which
they have been seen to prey on, and in some cases multiple individuals chasing.
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