Domestication Lab, Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, Department of Interdisciplinary Life Sciences, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 17;17(8):e0271590. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271590. eCollection 2022.
Reputation is a key component in social interactions of group-living animals and appears to play a role in the establishment of cooperation. Animals can form reputations of individuals by directly interacting with them or by observing them interact with a third party, i.e., eavesdropping. Previous research has focused on whether dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) can eavesdrop on humans because of their ability to cooperate with humans, however the results are mixed and if they can eavesdrop, it is unknown whether this ability evolved during the domestication process or whether it was inherited from their ancestor, wolves (Canis lupus). Our study investigated whether equally hand-raised, pack-living dogs and wolves can form reputations of humans in a food-giving situation through indirect and/or direct experience. The experimental procedure comprised three parts: baseline (to test whether the subject preferred a person prior to the experiment), observation and testing. In the observation phase, the subject observed two humans interact with a dog demonstrator-one acted generously and fed the dog, and the other acted selfishly and refused to feed the dog. The subject could then choose which person to approach in the test phase. In the following experience phase, the animals interacted directly with the same two humans who behaved either in a generous or selfish manner. Then, they were again given a choice whom to approach. We found that dogs and wolves, at the group level, did not differentiate between a generous or selfish partner after indirect or direct experience, but wolves were more attentive towards the generous person during the observation phase and some dogs and wolves did prefer the generous partner, at least after indirect and direct experience was combined. Our study suggests that reputation formation may be more difficult than expected for animals and we emphasise the importance of context when studying reputation formation in animals.
声誉是群居动物社会互动的关键组成部分，似乎在合作的建立中发挥作用。动物可以通过直接与个体互动或通过观察个体与第三方（即偷听）的互动来形成个体的声誉。先前的研究集中在狗（Canis lupus familiaris）是否可以通过与人类合作的能力来偷听人类，但是结果喜忧参半，如果它们可以偷听，那么尚不清楚这种能力是在驯化过程中进化而来的，还是来自它们的祖先狼（Canis lupus）。我们的研究调查了在食物给予情况下，同样经过手养和群体饲养的狗和狼是否可以通过间接和/或直接经验来对人类形成声誉。实验程序包括三个部分：基线（在实验之前测试对象是否更喜欢一个人）、观察和测试。在观察阶段，对象观察两个人类与一只狗示教者互动-一个慷慨大方，喂狗，另一个自私自利，拒绝喂狗。然后，对象可以在测试阶段选择接近哪个人类。在接下来的经验阶段，动物与同样以慷慨或自私方式行事的两个人类直接互动。然后，他们再次有机会选择接近谁。我们发现，狗和狼在群体水平上，无论是间接还是直接经验，都没有区分慷慨或自私的伙伴，但狼在观察阶段对慷慨的人更加关注，一些狗和狼至少在间接和直接经验相结合后，更喜欢慷慨的伙伴。我们的研究表明，对于动物来说，声誉的形成可能比预期的更困难，我们强调在研究动物的声誉形成时，上下文的重要性。
