ArticleScientific reports2019
Wolves lead and dogs follow, but they both cooperate with humans.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review on the effect of individual characteristics and management practices on equine cognition.Animal cognition · 2025Pooled it
- Alarm or emotion? intranasal oxytocin helps determine information conveyed by dog barks for adult male human listeners.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Trial
- Human-socialized dogs and wolves show similar behavioural reactions to human fear odour.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Invisible attitudes have visible effects on the behaviour of animals in scientific studies.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Striking global similarities in dog-human interactions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Showing Behaviour in One Hundred and One Dogs: Gazing, Breed and Cephalic Index.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Haptic Signals as a Communication Tool Between Handlers and Dogs: Review of a New Field.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Behavioural manifestations of human-directed social motivation in dogs.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Companion animals support human wellbeing and health: evolutionary, behavioral and physiological contexts.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Influence of agility training on body-size and object solidity perception in pet dogs.PloS one · 2026Article
- Pet dogs prefer to work alone than to engage in a challenging cooperative task with conspecifics.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Deference or sociability? Insights from dogs' and wolves' human-directed behavior in a food-conflict task.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Do dogs know what humans know? A study into pet dogs' (Canis familiaris) ability to attribute knowledge to an unfamiliar person.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Social learning in dogs from an ecologically valid perspective.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- After all, how valuable is the dog model for examining human socio-cognitive abilities?Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Familiar Dog or Familiar Person: Who Do Pet Dogs Best Synchronize with?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Body Awareness Does Not Need a Pedigree: Mixed-Breed Dogs Rely More on Self-Representation Than Social Learning in a Spatial Task.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Impact of trainability on telomere dynamics of pet dogs (Canis lupus familiaris): An explorative study in aging dogs.PloS one · 2025Article
- Rank-Related Differences in Dogs' Behaviours in Frustrating Situations.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Breed function and behaviour correlate with endocranial volume in domestic dogs.Biology letters · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Due to their convergent evolution, dogs have been suggested as a good model for the evolution of human social skills, such as tolerance and cooperativeness. However, recent studies have revealed that wolves (dogs' closest undomesticated relatives) are more tolerant and cooperative with conspecifics than dogs. It is still possible, though, that selection during domestication enhanced cooperative inclinations specifically towards humans, predicting better cooperation with humans in dogs than in wolves. We tested this hypothesis by comparing similarly human-raised wolves and dogs when cooperating with a familiar human partner in a string-pulling task. Both dogs and wolves were highly successful with the human partner, highlighting that dog-human cooperation could have evolved based on wolves' social skills. However, wolves and dogs differed in how they cooperated with their human partners with wolves being more likely to initiate movement leading the interaction with humans, whereas dogs were more likely to wait for the human to initiate action and then follow. Accordingly, we propose that during the course of domestication, after an initial reduction in fear of humans, dogs were selected for increased submissive inclinations (Deferential Behaviour Hypothesis) in order to minimize conflicts over resources, to ensure safe co-habitation and co-working in a way that humans lead and dogs follow.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.