ArticleScientific reports2019
Wolves and dogs recruit human partners in the cooperative string-pulling task.
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 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reward expectation drives dogs' choices in a prosocial test.Animal cognition · 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
- Do dogs know what humans know? A study into pet dogs' (Canis familiaris) ability to attribute knowledge to an unfamiliar person.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- A Conceptual Framework for the Co-Construction of Human-Dog Dyadic Relationship.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Review
- Pigs solve a cooperative task without showing a clear understanding of the need for a partner.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Development of a Marmoset Apparatus for Automated Pulling to study cooperative behaviors.eLife · 2024Article
- Development of a Marmoset Apparatus for Automated Pulling (MarmoAAP) to Study Cooperative Behaviors.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Factors Contributing to Successful Spontaneous Dog-Human Cooperation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Cooperation increases bottlenose dolphins' (Tursiops truncatus) social affiliation.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Dogs take into account the actions of a human partner in a cooperative task.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Wolves and dogs fail to form reputations of humans after indirect and direct experience in a food-giving situation.PloS one · 2022Article
- Context-Specific Arousal During Resting in Wolves and Dogs: Effects of Domestication?Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Investigating Indirect and Direct Reputation Formation in Asian Elephants (Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In comparison to non-human animals, humans are highly flexible in cooperative tasks, which may be a result of their ability to understand a partner's role in such interactions. Here, we tested if wolves and dogs could flexibly adjust their behaviour according to whether they needed a partner to solve a cooperative loose string-pulling paradigm. First, we presented animals with a delay condition where a human partner was released after the subject so that the animal had to delay pulling the string to enable coordinated pulling with the human partner. Subsequently, we investigated whether subjects would recruit a partner depending on whether they could operate the apparatus alone, or help from a partner was required. Both wolves and dogs successfully waited in the delay condition in 88% of the trials. Experimental subjects were also successful in recruiting a partner, which occurred significantly more often in the cooperation trials than in the solo pulling condition. No species differences were found in either experiment. These results suggest that both wolves and dogs have some understanding of whether a social partner is needed to accomplish a task, which enables behavioural coordination and cooperation.
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