Who knew dogs could get any cuter?
Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, humans are highly capable of cooperation and support, and this cooperation, without any direct personal benefit, is called prosocial behavior. However, ethologists from the Messerli Research Institute at the Vetmeduni, Vienna, were curious if these prosocial traits exist in other animals, and to what extent. As it turns out, dogs display this behavior too.
Prosocial behavior has been previously demonstrated in animals closely related to humans, such as primates, however most other studies have only looked at rats and jackdaws. There was one study that found prosocial behavior in dogs towards humans, but according to Friederike Range, study director of the Messerli Research Institute, it was unclear whether the dogs were just reacting to the communication from humans or if they were truly exhibiting the behavior.
“Dogs and their nearest relatives, the wolves, exhibit social and cooperative behaviour, so there are grounds to assume that these animals also behave prosocially toward conspecifics [members of the same species]. Additionally, over thousands of years of domestication, dogs were selected for special social skills,” explained Range. It was this knowledge that led Range and her colleagues Mylene Quervel-Chaumette, Rachel Dale and Sarah Marshall-Pescini to study 16 dogs to test for the behavior amongst man’s best friend.
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To study prosocial behavior, researchers set up a bar-pulling system where the trained dogs had to pull trays to decide whether another dog would receive a treat in the next cage. The “donor” dogs used their mouths to pull a string to bring a tray toward a second “receiver” dog, and they could choose either an empty tray or a tray with a treat. The donor dog would not receive a treat — the only purpose of the exercise was to benefit the receiver.
The researchers conducted several control tests to make sure that the dogs were not simply pulling the trays for fun, and after these control trials, they made sure the dogs understood what pulling the tray meant — they allowed the donor dogs to pull on a tray to give themselves a treat, and all the dogs did just that. “This control excludes the possibility that the dogs did not pull on the tray out of fear of the unfamiliar dogs. Given the same situation, the dogs gladly gave themselves a treat,” said Range.
Interestingly, whether or not the donor dogs knew the receiving dogs made a difference. The donor dogs pulled the treat tray more often for dogs they were familiar with, however, they were reserved in pulling the tray when an unfamiliar dog was in the next cage. “Dogs truly behave prosocially toward other dogs. That had never been experimentally demonstrated before,” said Range. “What we also found was that the degree of familiarity among the dogs further influenced this behaviour. Prosocial behaviour was exhibited less frequently toward unfamiliar dogs than toward familiar ones.”
“We were also able to disprove the argument that the dogs pulled the string less frequently because they were distracted by the unfamiliar partner during the test. Only rarely did a donor dog interact with the unfamiliar dog,” Range explained. What this means is that dogs actually show preferential treatment towards their friends — a trait humans display as well.
The next step for the researchers is to figure out why dogs display this behavior. Have they always acted this way or is it a result of domestication? I for one, can’t wait to find out.
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