Dog (Canis familiaris) – Human Communication: Domestication Effects, Showing, Perception Understanding and Deception
Living together with animals is cultural tradition among humans stretching back though out history. Therefore, it is not a surprise that some communication exists between these animals and humans. Domestication might have facilitated the animal’s understanding of human communicative signals. Dogs (C...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
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| Online Access: | https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/145281/ https://www.zora.uzh.ch/145281 |
| Summary: | Living together with animals is cultural tradition among humans stretching back though out history. Therefore, it is not a surprise that some communication exists between these animals and humans. Domestication might have facilitated the animal’s understanding of human communicative signals. Dogs (Canis familiaris) seem to be especially skilful, and outperform apes in many tasks involving the understanding of human signals. However, also adult wolves (Canis lupus), the closed living ancestor of dog, show some capabilities in understanding human communication, which questions domestication as the only reason for the dogs extraordinary skills. The aim of this dissertation is to provide further insight into dog-human communication, the dog’s ability to understand its human partner, the intentionality of communicating, the understanding of the humans and conspecifics perception, and deceptive behaviour towards humans, while considering domestication, artificial selection, and experience effects. Pet dogs, pack dogs, and wolves (pack dogs and wolves having been raised and living under the same conditions) were confronted with the task to indicate a food location to either an uninformed human cooperator or competitor. Both dogs and wolves showed more gaze alternation and other food-directing behaviours in the presence of the cooperative than in the presence of the competitive partner. The pet dogs also used more misleading signals directing to an empty hiding place in the presence of a competitive partner and indicated the food location to the cooperator more than pack dogs. This finding suggests that dogs and wolves have an understanding about the role of the two partners and further, based on the results of the pet dogs, they might possess an understanding about the competitive partner’s intention to eat the hidden food. Based on the similar performance between pack dogs and wolves, as well as the difference between pack dogs and pet dogs it seems that rather life experiences than domestication is driving the dogs ... |
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