CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Introduction: pro-social behavior refers to voluntary actions that benefit others. This includes rescue behavior, defined as those behaviors directed to end someone else?s stress. Studies on this topic are scarce in domestic dogs. In the present work, we evaluated whether dogs performed rescue behaviors when their owners pretended to be trapped inside of a wooden box. Hypothesis: dogs would recue their trapped owners more frequently when they showed signs of stress than when they stood quietly in the box. Additionally, this behavior would be modulated by the dogs? training experience. Method: we used a wooden box (1.75 m high; 1 m2 base) with a transparent Plexiglas door. The door could be opened from the outside by pushing on it or by removing a weight that prevented its opening. We evaluated three independent groups of dogs in the following conditions: Stressed Owner (SO), the owner pretended to be trapped and emitted clear signs of stress (i.e. screaming for help, hitting the box?s walls) (n=21); Quiet Owner (QO), the owner remained quiet and ignored the dog during the test (n=15); Trained dogs (TD), search and rescue dogs were testedsimilarly than dogs in the SO condition (n=10). Each condition comprised three trials, each trial lasting 2 minutes or until the dog opened the box. The measures were: opening the box and its latency; time in proximity and contact with the box, time with ears or tail down; and frequency of lip licking and vocalizations. Results: dogs in the SO and TD conditions opened the box more than in the QO (p=.005; p=.02). SO dogs did not open the box above chance level (p=0.14), whereas TD did (p=0.04). Door opening in the QO was lower than expected by chance (p=0.01). Furthermore, dogs in the QO condition had more latency to open the box than dogs in SO (p=.028) or TD (p=.002). Moreover, TD dogs spent more time in proximity and contact with the box than SO (p=.02; p=.03) and QO dogs (ps