Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16801, USA.
Curr Biol. 2021 Jul 26;31(14):3137-3144.e11. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.06.051. Epub 2021 Jul 12.
Although we know that dogs evolved from wolves, it remains unclear how domestication affected dog cognition. One hypothesis suggests dog domestication altered social maturation by a process of selecting for an attraction to humans. Under this account, dogs became more flexible in using inherited skills to cooperatively communicate with a new social partner that was previously feared and expressed these unusual social skills early in development. Here, we comparedog (n = 44) and wolf (n = 37) puppies, 5-18 weeks old, on a battery of temperament and cognition tasks. We find that dog puppies are more attracted to humans, read human gestures more skillfully, and make more eye contact with humans than wolf puppies. The two species are similarly attracted to familiar objects and perform similarly on non-social measures of memory and inhibitory control. These results are consistent with the idea that domestication enhanced the cooperative-communicative abilities of dogs as selection for attraction to humans altered social maturation.
虽然我们知道狗是由狼进化而来的，但驯化如何影响狗的认知仍不清楚。一种假设认为，驯化通过选择对人类的吸引力来改变社会成熟。根据这一说法，狗变得更灵活，能够利用遗传技能与以前害怕的新社交伙伴进行合作交流，并在早期发展中表现出这些不寻常的社交技能。在这里，我们比较了 5-18 周大的幼犬（n=44）和狼（n=37）在一系列气质和认知任务上的表现。我们发现，狗比狼更吸引人类，更熟练地读懂人类的手势，与人类的眼神交流也更多。这两个物种对熟悉的物体有相似的吸引力，在非社会性的记忆和抑制控制测试中表现相似。这些结果与这样一种观点一致，即驯化增强了狗的合作交流能力，因为对人类的吸引力的选择改变了社会成熟。
