Domesticated Dog
Dogs are not wild animals that have been tamed to live with humans. Rather dogs are genetically domesticated to live amongst people. Hare and Tomasello (2005) maintain that domestication of both people and dogs
was during a similar period and was a reaction to resources at that time. Most of the dogs in the world lived as scavengers (Udell et al, 2010) who do not enter strict rigid social hierarchies but can accept people as companions. Dogs’ ability to coexist and cohabitate with people has led to a significant long-lasting relationship (Udell et al, 2010).
The domestication process has affected dogs’ behaviour and specifically social behaviours expressed by dogs particularly between dogs and humans. The role of domestication process on dogs has meant there was an extension in the socialisation period compared to wolves (Udell et al, 2010). In other words, they stay as juveniles for longer so display playful characteristics. Marshall-Pescini et al (2015) study demonstrated a canine's ability to have inhibitory control was not due to how well trained the dogs were. Concluding, that there was a genetic inherited ability for domestic dogs specifically, whereas the wolves in the study did not perform as well.
You get me
When discussing domestication’s role in canine behaviour and training, it is important to understand the level of complex cognitive ability of a dog to interpret human social cues. The origin of the ability for dogs to understand human social cues was not down to an inheritance of this trait from wolves (Virányi et al, 2008) or an over exposure to people. Conversely, it has been an outcome of the process of domestication (Hare and Tomasello, 2005). Additionally, dogs are found to have an ability to read people's social cues to get food (Tomasello et al, 1997; Call et al, 1998; Hare et al, 2002).
A study found that non-human raised dogs can understand our mannerisms more so than non-human raised wolves or even our closest relatives’ chimpanzees (Kirchhofer et all, 2012) as the researchers tested this by hiding food and pointing to it. It was found that dogs understood quicker even with no prior engagement from people. Concluding, that dogs perform better at understanding people, due to the domestication process. Reid (2009, p.326) questions whether it is the very fact that chimpanzees do not rely on people to survive, whereas dogs do, that accelerated a ‘dogs’ social cognitive abilities’.
One of the family
Domestic dogs’ capacity to accept people as social companions impacts their behaviour as domestic animals rely on people for livelihood. Dogs are dependent on people, by way of design from the domestication process. The social behaviour shown by dogs to rely on us for their needs to be fulfilled was demonstrated in many studies, notably Marshall-Pescini et al (2017) who found, depending on how much of a bond a dog has with the human when faced with an unsolvable task, they will ‘look back’ at that owner for assistance . Marshall-Pescini et al (2017) study highlighted dogs who spent more time with their people (be that agility or simply being of older age, they have spent a lot more time with them) they would look back at their person for help with the task for a longer period than others who did not spend as much time with their human yet. Although all domestic dogs in the study did look back at their person. This was a fascinating ability for dogs to have started off thousands of years ago picking up the scraps from people's leftovers to then have the cognitive ability to seek their human for assistance to get the food for their benefit.
The impact of domestication on canine’s behaviour and training, are their ability to understand social cues from people, which was evident in dogs as young as six weeks old (Riedel et al., 2008). The fact that dogs can gain an ability to understand what we're asking of them and the expectations on them plays a huge part in how we train them.
Citations
Call, J., Hare, B. and Tomasello, M., 1998. Chimpanzees’ use of gaze in an object choice task. Animal Cognition, 1, pp.89-100.
Hare, B. and Tomasello, M., 2005. Human-like social skills in dogs?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(9), pp.439-444.
Hare, B. and Wrangham, R., 2002. 44 Integrating Two Evolutionary Models for the Study of Social Cognition. The cognitive animal, p.363.
Kirchhofer, K.C., Zimmermann, F., Kaminski, J. and Tomasello, M., 2012. Dogs (Canis familiaris), but not chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), understand imperative pointing. PloS one, 7(2), p.e30913
Marshall-Pescini, S., Virányi, Z. and Range, F., 2015. The effect of domestication on inhibitory control: wolves and dogs compared. PloS one, 10(2), p.e0118469
Marshall-Pescini, S., Rao, A., Virányi, Z. and Range, F., 2017. The role of domestication and experience in ‘looking back’ towards humans in an unsolvable task. Scientific reports, 7(1), pp.1-7
Reid, P.J., 2009. Adapting to the human world: dogs’ responsiveness to our social cues. Behavioural processes, 80(3), pp.325-333
Riedel, J., Schumann, K., Kaminski, J., Call, J. and Tomasello, M., 2008. The early ontogeny of human–dog communication. Animal Behaviour, 75(3), pp.1003-1014
Tomasello, M., Call, J. and Gluckman, A., 1997. Comprehension of novel communicative signs by apes and human children. Child development, pp.1067-1080
Udell, M.A., Dorey, N.R. and Wynne, C.D., 2010. What did domestication do to dogs? A new account of dogs' sensitivity to human actions. Biological reviews, 85(2), pp.327-345
Virányi, Z., Gácsi, M., Kubinyi, E., Topál, J., Belényi, B., Ujfalussy, D. and Miklósi, Á., 2008. Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal cognition, 11, pp.373-387
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