Wolves and dogs follow their conspecifics gaze into distant space

WERHAHN, G.; BARRERA, G.; VIRÁNYI, Z & RANGE, F.

Vienna

Conferencia; 3rd tok conference of COMPCOG; 2013

Gaze following describes the ability to visually co-orient with another individual’s head orientation allowing the gaze follower to gain information on its social and physical environment. Human and non-human animals share this basic gaze following behavior, which is believed to be an important prerequisite for more complex social interactions. For canines, past studies on gaze following into distant space have not been conclusive: experiments using a human demonstrator have shown that wolves do follow gaze into distant space, but no positive evidence has yet been found for dogs. These results are surprising given that free-ranging dogs retained important aspects of the social organization of their ancestors in regard to dominance hierarchy, affiliative interactions, leadership and formation of coalitions. Many of these aspects require some form of visual coordination and such findings imply that gaze following should be similarly important for dogs as it is for wolves. Here, we used observations to study the exploitation of gaze cues given by conspecifics in the setting of social pack life. We video recorded packs of captive wolves and dogs in order to document spontaneous gazing events triggered by non-predictable environmental stimuli. We found that both canines showed spontaneous gaze following at comparable frequencies without differing in their general responsiveness towards external stimuli. Our study confirms that wolves and dogs alike do spontaneously follow the gaze of their conspecifics into distant space when studied under relevant social conditions.