Dogs' discrimination of human selfish and generous attitudes: a comparison of family dogs, shelter dogs and puppies

FREIDIN, E.; CARBALLO, F; BENTOSELA, M.

Padova

Congreso; 5th Canine Science Forum; 2016

HighlightAfter 12 trials, family dogs reliably discriminate between humans who have been generous or selfish in food exchanges with them. We studied the role of socialization in the development of this skill by testing shelter dogs and puppies. We found that all dogs tested, except for 45-days-old puppies, readily make this discrimination successfully, thus suggesting that the social skill involved develops early and does not require consistent social experience. Discrimination of and memory for others? generous and selfish behaviors could be adaptive abilities in social animals. Dogs have seemingly expressed such skills in both direct and indirect interactions with humans. However, it is not known whether these abilities require extensive social interaction with humans to be properly expressed. To answer this, we compared adult family dogs (i.e., well-socialized subjects), adult shelter dogs (i.e., inconsistently socialized subjects), and puppies (i.e., subjects that are in the process of developing social skills) in a task in which they were exposed to a generous and a selfish experimenter (GE and SE, respectively). During training, the GE would make a pointing gesture towards a bowl with hidden food, and then allowed the subject to eat the food, whereas the SE would make the pointing gesture but would not allow the subject to access the food. After 6 training trials with each experimenter, subjects were presented with a choice between the GE and the SE. We also ran a second set of training trials and a second choice test. Family dogs, shelter dogs, and 60-dyas-old puppies chose the GE over the SE above chance levels after the first set of training trials (binomial tests, Ps