Can your dog sniff out other people’s character? Does human behavior affect our dog’s behavior? According to this study, the odds are: not likely.
Hoi Lam Jim, a doctoral student at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria is studying the “evolution of cooperation” between humans and dogs.
Hoi Lam’s work seeks to “make comparisons between dogs raised and living in different environments.” In one study, she sought to see if dogs form “reputations” of humans based on what we do with and around them.
The Dog Study
With this in mind, Hoi Lam and her team arranged a study at the excellently-named Wolf Science Center. There, the research team had nine wolves and six dogs go through two trials.
First, the dogs watched two humans interact with another dog. In the test, one human was “generous” and freely fed the dog snacks. Conversely, the “selfish” human withheld food. Afterward, the dogs took part in direct interaction with two other humans. Again, one was generous, while the other was selfish.
During the study, the team analyzed the dog’s behavior at two points. They began with a test to see which human the dog would approach after the observation period. A similar test followed after the dogs directly interacted with the two humans.
The Results
The results of the study were published in the open-access journal, PLOSONE.
The study suggests that neither dogs nor wolves form judgments of people after direct or indirect contact with “selfish” or “generous” human behavior. That said, the authors noted that wolves were “more attentive towards the generous person during the observation phase and some dogs and wolves did prefer the generous partner, at least after indirect and direct experience was combined.”
The authors state that “reputation formation” is more elusive than they believed and more research is needed. Furthermore, the context and ethics of any future study are important to consider.
In the meantime, Hoi Lam Jim plans to continue her research. In the end, she hopes to break new ground in the study and research of dog domestication and evolution. And while your dog may not become a private detective anytime soon, that nose may save your life one day.
