Vékony Kata, Bakos Viktória, Pongrácz Péter
Department of Ethology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, 1117 Budapest, Hungary.
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Magyar Tudósok krt. 2, 1117 Budapest, Hungary.
Animals (Basel). 2024 Nov 26;14(23):3411. doi: 10.3390/ani14233411.
Dogs are strongly dependent on humans, not only for sustenance, but they also form asymmetrical bonds with us where they rely on assistance from the human partner in the case of difficult situations. At the same time, cohabiting dogs form hierarchies, and their rank strongly influences their behaviour in various social interactions. In this study, we investigated whether high- and low-ranking dogs would behave differently in non-social and social contexts where a formerly available reward suddenly becomes inaccessible. We hypothesised that dominant and subordinate dogs would show different levels of human dependence; thus, they will show different levels and different signs of frustration depending on the social nature of the context, where the reward was locked either in a closed cage or withheld in the hand of the experimenter. The results showed that while the holistic rank ('dominant' vs. 'subordinate') of the dogs did not show a significant association with their reactions to frustrating situations, the rank components ('agonistic' and 'leadership' ranks) were better predictors of the dogs' behaviour. In the non-social context, the highly resource-oriented 'agonistic-dominant' dogs were more persistent with their attempts of getting to the reward. However, in the social context, the dogs with high 'leadership scores' behaved more demandingly with the non-complying experimenter. This study provides a first-time indication that the various aspects of dominance in dogs can affect their adaptive reward-oriented behaviours differently, depending on the potentially available human assistance.
狗强烈依赖人类，不仅为了获取食物，而且它们与我们形成不对称的纽带关系，在困难情况下会依赖人类伙伴的帮助。同时，共同生活的狗会形成等级制度，它们的等级在各种社交互动中对其行为有很大影响。在本研究中，我们调查了高等级和低等级的狗在非社交和社交情境中面对先前可得的奖励突然无法获取时，行为是否会有所不同。我们假设占主导地位和处于从属地位的狗会表现出不同程度的对人类的依赖；因此，根据情境的社交性质，即奖励被锁在封闭笼子里或被实验者握在手中，它们会表现出不同程度和不同迹象的沮丧。结果表明，虽然狗的整体等级（“主导”与“从属”）与其对令人沮丧情境的反应没有显著关联，但等级组成部分（“争斗性”和“领导性”等级）能更好地预测狗的行为。在非社交情境中，高度以资源为导向的“争斗性主导”的狗在试图获取奖励时更有毅力。然而，在社交情境中，“领导得分高”的狗对不配合的实验者表现得更具要求性。这项研究首次表明，狗的主导地位的各个方面会根据潜在可得的人类帮助，以不同方式影响它们适应性的以奖励为导向的行为。
