Dogs and wolves keep a close eye on what people do with their food, reports Viennese behavioral researcher Sebastian Vetter. They found hidden chicks (parts) faster when they could see how they were hiding than when they had to rely on their sense of smell to search. This suggests that the animals prefer visual search rather than relying on their sense of smell.
Vetter and colleagues hid several chicks or half-chicks in a nearly seven hundred square meter room for nine timber wolves and eight mixed-breed dogs from the Wolf Research Center in Ernstbrunn (Lower Austria) of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.
Sometimes it is likely that the animals are hiding
The dogs were smaller than the wolves, would have taken longer to eat large pieces of food and would probably not have been motivated enough to investigate further, the researchers said in the specialized publication. Sometimes the animals were allowed to watch while they were hiding, sometimes their view of the experimental enclosure was blocked.
Wolves were faster than their domesticated relatives in both situations because they were likely more motivated and persistent. The research was published in the journal ‘Plos One’.
“Don’t just focus on the smell”
Both the dogs and wolves found the food faster and traveled shorter distances when they could view the shelter, the scientists report. “This suggests that they did not then rely solely on smell to find the rewards,” they wrote. The animals had apparently observed the humans closely and remembered the spatial locations of the shelters.
In both cases, wolves outpaced their domesticated relatives. The researchers think this is probably not due to better observation skills or spatial orientation, but rather to greater motivation and search endurance. Whether this was due to the size of the food reward was not tested.
Source: Krone
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