In a series of experiments, a duo of researchers from the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University has observed eight-week-old wolf puppies spontaneously responding to social-communicative behaviors from an unfamiliar person by retrieving a ball. These observations come as a surprise because it had been hypothesized that the cognitive abilities necessary to understand cues given by a human, such as those required for a game of fetch, arose in dogs only after humans domesticated them at least 15,000 years ago.
“When I saw the first wolf puppy retrieving the ball I literally got goose bumps,” said Dr. Christina Hansen Wheat, the lead author of the study.
“It was so unexpected, and I immediately knew that this meant that if variation in human-directed play behavior exists in wolves, this behavior could have been a potential target for early selective pressures exerted during dog domestication.”
Dr. Hansen Wheat and her colleague, Dr. Hans Temrin, tested 13 wolf puppies from three different litters in a behavioral test battery designed to assess various behaviors in young dog puppies.
The first two wolf litters they worked with showed little to no interest in balls let alone retrieving one.
They thought little of it at the time. It was what they would have expected, after all.
That is until they tested the third wolf litter and some of the puppies not only went for the ball, but also responded to the social cues given by the unfamiliar person and brought it back.
“It was very surprising that we had wolves actually retrieving the ball,” Dr. Hansen Wheat said.
“I did not expect that. I do not think any of us did. It was especially surprising that the wolves retrieved the ball for a person they had never met before.”
Similarities between dogs and wolves can tell us something about where the behavior we see in our dogs comes from.
“And, while it was a surprise to see a wolf puppy playing fetch and connecting with a person in that way, in retrospect, it also makes sense,” Dr. Hansen Wheat said.
“Wolf puppies showing human-directed behavior could have had a selective advantage in early stages of dog domestication.”
The findings were published in the journal iScience.
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Christina Hansen Wheat Hans Temrin. Intrinsic Ball Retrieving in Wolf Puppies Suggests Standing Ancestral Variation for Human-Directed Play Behavior. iScience, published online January 16, 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.100811