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New Directions in Canine Behaviour

Posted on May 3, 2015 | Leave a comment

The January 2015 special edition of the journal Behavioural Processes is fully online (until January 2016). This means you can download .pdf copies of fifteen interesting research articles about dogs and behavior.

In the opening editorial of this journal, Monique A.R. Udell says that research into social development and cognitive evolution of dogs is just beginning to scratch the surface despite the long history of the human-canine relationship.

I am particularly interested in these fields of research (as my many blog postings under the category of ‘research’ show!) because of the work I do with dogs. Understanding dogs is critical to working with them in a holistic approach to health.

My only criticism of journal articles generally (not just this journal) is the odd and often long names that researchers choose for the title of their articles. It is just one indication that researchers work in a different world from generalist audiences; they are often judged in peer reviews for language this is technical. In my experience as a research manager, I have also found that most academic researchers write in a style using long sentences and paragraphs.

Some of these articles are easier to read than others because of this.

The articles in this issue are:

Revisiting the concept of behavior patterns in animal behavior with an example from food-caching sequences in Wolves (Canis lupus), Coyotes (Canis latrans), and Red Foxes (Vulpes vulpes)
Assessment of attachment behaviour to human caregivers in wolf pups (Canis lupus lupus)
Self-regulatory depletion in dogs: insulin release is not necessary for the replenishment of persistence
Dogs and their human companions: The effect of familiarity on dog-human interactions
Scent of the familiar: An fMRI study of canine brain responses to familiar and unfamiliar human and dog odors
Shut up and pet me! Domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) prefer petting to vocal praise in concurrent and single-alternative choice procedures
A comparison of pet and purpose-bred research dog (Canis familiaris) performance on human-guided object-choice tasks
Gazing toward humans: A study on water rescue dogs using the impossible task paradigm
Is that fear? Domestic dogs’ use of social referencing signals from an unfamiliar person
Why do adult dogs ‘play’?
Down but not out: Supine postures as facilitators of play in domestic dogs
The advent of canine performance science: Offering a sustainable future for working dogs
Do you see what I see? Can non-experts with minimal training reproduce expert ratings in behavioral assessments of working dogs?
Which personality dimensions do puppy tests measure? A systematic procedure for categorizing behavioral assays
Citizen science: A new direction in canine behavior research

Kathleen Crisley, specialist in dog massage, rehabilitation and nutrition/food therapy, Canine Catering Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand

18,000 years and counting

Posted on November 22, 2013 | 1 comment

Wolves likely were domesticated by European hunter–gatherers more than 18,000 years ago and gradually evolved into dogs that became household pets, say a research team based at the University of California Los Angeles.

“We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them,” said Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science and senior author of the research. “Europe is where the oldest dogs are found.”

The team’s genetic analysis is published 15 November issue of the journal Science.

The researchers studied 10 ancient “wolf-like” animals and eight “dog-like” animals, mostly from Europe. These animals were all more than 1,000 years old, most were thousands of years old, and two were more than 30,000 years old.

The biologists studied the mitochondrial DNA of the animals, which is abundant in ancient remains. By comparing this ancient mitochondrial DNA with the modern mitochondrial genomes of 77 domestic dogs, 49 wolves and four coyotes, the researchers determined that the domestic dogs were genetically grouped with ancient wolves or dogs from Europe — not with wolves found anywhere else in the world or even with modern European wolves. Dogs, they concluded, derived from ancient wolves that inhabited Europe and are now extinct.

Wayne said that that the domestication of predatory wolves likely occurred among ancient hunter–gatherer groups rather than as part of humans’ development of sedentary, agricultural-based communities.

“The wolf is the first domesticated species and the only large carnivore humans ever domesticated,” Wayne said. “This always seemed odd to me. Other wild species were domesticated in association with the development of agriculture and then needed to exist in close proximity to humans. This would be a difficult position for a large, aggressive predator. But if domestication occurred in association with hunter–gatherers, one can imagine wolves first taking advantage of the carcasses that humans left behind — a natural role for any large carnivore — and then over time moving more closely into the human niche through a co-evolutionary process.”

There is a scientific debate over when dogs were domesticated and whether it was linked with the development of agriculture fewer than 10,000 years ago, or whether it occurred much earlier. In the new Science research, Wayne and his colleagues estimate that dogs were domesticated between 18,000 and 32,000 years ago.

The research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation.

You can read more about the team’s research in this UCLA media release.

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Tagged College of Letters and Science, dog origins, domestic dogs, Europe, Los Angeles, National Science Foundation, Robert Wayne, science, UCLA, University of California, University of California Los Angeles, wolves