Differences between hand-raised wolves and dogs indicate that social attraction, synchronizing behaviour and communicative abilities of dogs changed markedly during the process of domestication.

Raising wolf cubs and dog puppies in an identical way re¬vealed many specific social behavioural differences between the two species, especially with regard to their interactions with humans. Even at an early age (3-5 weeks), dogs dis¬played more communicative signals (e.g. vocalization, tail wagging, gazing at the human’s face) and were less aggres¬sive and avoidant than wolves, although the general activity level did not differ between the two species.

Due to human fostering, 5-week-old wolves showed a clear preference for their caregiver in a preference test, if the other stimulus was another human. However, in contrast to dogs, wolves’ preferences for the caregiver did not develop into a behavioural pattern that could be categorized as attachment. In contrast to hand-reared dogs and pet dogs, individually socialized, hand-reared wolves did not show highly different responsive¬ness to their caregiver compared to an unfamiliar human. While wolves did not display characteristic patterns of attachment toward their caregiver, their preference for her remained strong at the age of 1 or 2 years.

Our young hand–reared dogs, but not wolves, were able to use more difficult human pointing gestures (e.g., momentary distal pointing) spon­taneously. Young wolves needed massive training to reach the same level of success that dogs reached instantly. The reason for this difference might be that in contrast to dogs it was very difficult to establish gaze-to-gaze contact with the wolves; therefore, wolves were less able to attend to an experimenter’s gestures for an extended duration. Dogs are inclined to look at our faces, and this inclination provides them with a broadened opportunity for learning about hu­man gestures. However, socialized adult wolves can utilize human communicative signals. Thus the dog-wolf difference should be interpreted as a developmental change in the timing of some social behaviours rather than an overall difference in the ability.

 

Further reading

Miklósi, Á., Kubinyi E., Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Virányi, Zs., Csányi, V. 2003. A simple reason for a big difference: wolves do not look back at humans but dogs do. Current Biology, 13: 763-766. (pdf)

Gácsi, M., Győri, B., Miklósi, Á., Virányi, Zs., Kubinyi, E., Topál, J., Csányi, V. 2005. Species-specific differences and similarities in the behavior of hand-raised dog and wolf pups in social situations with humans. Developmental Psychobiology, 47: 111-122. (pdf)

Kubinyi, E., Virányi, Zs., Miklósi, Á. 2007. Comparative social cognition: From wolf and dog to humans. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, 2: 26-46. (pdf)

Virányi, Zs., Gácsi, M., Kubinyi, E., Topál, J., Belényi, B., Ujfalussy, D., Miklósi, Á. 2008. Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (Canis lupus) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition, 11: 373-387. (pdf)

Topál, J., Gácsi, M., Miklósi, Á., Virányi, Zs., Kubinyi, E., Csányi, V. 2005. Attachment to humans: a comparative study on hand-reared wolves and differently socialized dog puppies. Animal Behaviour, 70: 1367-1375. (pdf)

Gácsi, M., Győri, B., Virányi, Zs., Kubinyi, E., Range, F., Belényi, B., Miklósi, Á. 2009. Explaining Dog Wolf Differences in Utilizing Human Pointing Gestures: Selection for Synergistic Shifts in the Development of Some Social Skills. PLoS ONE 4 (8): e6584. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone. 0006584.

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