Dogs are man's best friend because of the way they interact with us. According to one study, this is an innate ability
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himDogs may have earned the title of 'man's best friend' because of the way they interact with humans. According to one study, these particular abilities are innate and occur just after birth.
That dogs had a communication channel with us humans is nothing new. But now a new study tries to understand if this propensity is innate in animals or if it is the result of human training. Researchers at the University of Arizona have spent the past decade conducting research on canine behavior.
To do this, they collaborated with an organization that deals with making people with physical disabilities interact with dogs. They observed how 375 of the organization's puppies (aged just eight weeks), who had had very little interaction with humans prior to the experiment, went through a series of 'tests' designed to measure their communication skills.
Until now it was thought that these 'social' skills show up in adulthood, and instead we have found that even puppies (a bit like the little ones of the human species) are biologically prepared to interact in a social way - he explains. Emily Bray, who oversaw the study. - People have always been interested in the abilities of dogs to perform certain actions, such as following the indication of a finger or maintaining eye contact with a human being, but it has always been wondered to what extent these abilities were innate in dogs or they were the result of human training. We have found that the genetic component is very strong, and that these abilities are practically innate.
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The researchers engaged the puppies in four different tasks. In one, a researcher hid a treat under one of two inverted glasses and pointed at it with his finger to see if the puppy was able to follow the gesture. In another trial, the pups observed the researcher placing a yellow sign next to the glass with the food (instead of pointing it out) to mark where the reward was.
The other two tasks were designed to observe the puppies' propensity to look at the human face: in one, the researcher spoke to the dog (using language similar to that used with children), checking how long the puppy sustained. the human gaze; in another (called 'unsolvable task') the researcher hid a treat inside a closed container and showed it to the puppy, then measuring how often the puppy looked at it for help to open the container.
While many of the puppies responded positively to physical and verbal stimuli, only a few of them looked to the researcher to help them with the last task: this suggests that the dogs are genetically predisposed to respond to human-initiated communication, while their ability to initiate communication comes later.
Credits: cell.com
In studies on adult dogs, we find that animals often look to humans for help, in puppies, however this search for help does not yet seem part of their habits. In many things, this mirrors the behavior of human 'puppies': if we think, for example, of language learning, children can understand what we are saying even before they learn to physically reproduce words. It works the same way with puppies: they understand what is being communicated to them, but producing a response takes some developmental time.
Fonte: Current Biology
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