ArticleAnimal cognition2021
Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.
Article in Animal cognition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Attribution of consciousness to non-human animals: insights from AI and multidimensional frameworks.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Companion pigs alternate orientation between humans and snout-inaccessible targets.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Let's talk about "talking" dogs! Reviewing the science behind a bold idea.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Dogs as a model to study the emergence of concept manipulation skills for language-readiness.Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Human ostension enhances attentiveness but not performance in domestic pigs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Dogs' Gazing Behavior to Humans Is Related to Their Liveliness, Aggressiveness, and the Emotional Comfort They Provide.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Domestication and exposure to human social stimuli are not sufficient to trigger attachment to humans: a companion pig-dog comparative study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A Comparative Study of Dogs and Goats with Limited Human Socialization in the Impossible Task Paradigm.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Handling and Training of Wild Animals: Evidence and Ethics-Based Approaches and Best Practices in the Modern Zoo.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Review
- Out-of-reach rewards elicit human-oriented referential communicative behaviours in family dogs but not in family pigs.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Pigs as Pets: Early Human Relations with the Sulawesi Warty Pig (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Comparing Pears to Apples: Unlike Dogs, Cats Need Habituation before Lab Tests.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Disentangling help-seeking and giving up: differential human-directed gazing by dogs in a modified unsolvable task paradigm.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Breed group differences in the unsolvable problem task: herding dogs prefer their owner, while solitary hunting dogs seek stranger proximity.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Cognition and the human-animal relationship: a review of the sociocognitive skills of domestic mammals toward humans.Animal cognition · 2022Review
- Human proximity seeking in family pigs and dogs.Scientific reports · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
When facing an unsolvable problem, dogs exhibit spontaneous human-oriented behaviours (e.g. looking at the human partner, gaze alternations between the human and the target) sooner and for longer than domestic cats and hand-raised wolves. These behaviours have been interpreted as interspecific communicative acts aimed to initiate interaction. Here, we compare the emergence of human-oriented behaviours (e.g. orientation towards humans, orientation alternations, vocalizations) in similarly raised family dogs and miniature pigs utilising an unsolvable task paradigm which consists of Baseline (no task), Solvable and Unsolvable phases. Relative to the Baseline phase in which both species showed human-oriented behaviours to a similar extent, during the Unsolvable phase dogs showed more and pigs showed less such behaviours. Species-predispositions in communicative behaviour may explain why dogs have a higher inclination than pigs to initiate interspecific interactions with humans in problem-solving contexts.
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Registered trials
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.