Dogs’ and wolves’ differ in the time spent with an owner/caregiver or food in a concurrent choice procedure

Dogs show differential responding to their owners compared to strangers, including exploring more in the presence of the owner, gazing more at the owner, gazing more at a door through which the owner exited, following the owner more, and greeting the owner more effusively upon return. Wolves also show differential responding to their caregivers, similar to dogs’ behavior towards their owner. Nevertheless, overall levels of social interaction vary between dogs and wolves, with dogs playing more with both familiar and unfamiliar humans, spending more time in proximity to humans, and showing shorter latencies to approach humans than wolves. In the current study, we investigated whether dogs and hand-reared wolves differed in their preference for their owner/caregiver or food when they have been equally deprived of each (at least 4 hours). Each canid experienced four trials; we measured first choice and time spent with each alternative. For two subsets of dogs, we conducted a follow-up study investigating whether we could modify their preference by having the owner call to the dog (for dogs that exclusively chose their food first in the first study) or by providing higher value food in the food bowl (for dogs that exclusively chose their owner first in the first study). Dogs tended to allocate their first choice to the owner whereas wolves allocated more of their first choice to food. Dogs and wolves did not differ in the time allocated to food during the trial, but dogs did allocate more time to the owner than wolves did to the caregiver.

犬类对其主人的反应与陌生人存在显著差异，包括在主人面前更加活跃、更多地凝视主人、更多地注视主人离开的门口、更加频繁地跟随主人，以及在主人归来时更加热情地迎接。狼对其养护者的反应亦然，与犬类对其主人的行为相似。然而，犬类与狼之间的社交互动总体水平存在差异，犬类与熟悉和不熟悉的人类玩耍更多，在人类附近度过更多的时间，并且相较于狼，犬类在接近人类时表现出更短的潜伏期。在本研究中，我们探讨了当犬类和人工饲养的狼在各自的偏好（至少4小时）得到同等剥夺时，它们是否在对其主人/养护者或食物的偏好上存在差异。每只犬类经历了四次试验；我们测量了它们对每种替代选择的首次选择以及与每种选择共度的时间。对于两组犬类，我们进行了后续研究，以探究我们是否可以通过主人召唤犬类（针对在第一次研究中首先选择食物的犬类）或提供更高价值的食物（针对在第一次研究中首先选择主人的犬类）来改变它们的偏好。犬类倾向于将他们的首选分配给主人，而狼则将更多的首选分配给食物。犬类和狼在试验中分配给食物的时间上没有差异，但犬类分配给主人的时间相较于狼分配给养护者的时间更多。