4004 East 800 NorthBattle Ground, Indiana, 47920P:: (765) 567-2265F: (765) 567-4299W: WolfPark.org

This article is copyrighted © and can not be used without express permission of Wolf Park.For permission contact: Admin@WolfPark.org

How well do wolves and dogs understand people? By Clive D. L. Wynne, PhD. 2009

You know the situation. You were only thinking of just maybetaking a stroll with your dog. You got up from the couch andwere looking out of the window - just checking the weather -and already your dog is all excited and buzzing around yourfeet. He has brought his leash-perhaps even your shoes. Howdo they do that? Are dogs really mind readers?

At Wolf Park many visitors have doubtless seen the wolvesreacting with excited anticipation to the entry of their belovedhuman companions to the main enclosure, who then interactwith them, sometimes bearing treats. How well do the wolvesreally understand people their intentions? And how does thatcompare to the seemingly very intimate understanding ofpeople that pet dogs have?

It isn’t easy to design scientific experiments that can answerbig questions like how dogs and wolves think, but my team andI made an attempt this last winter. We decided to focus onwhether dogs and wolves comprehend that, if you can seethem then you may give them a treat, but if you cannot thenyou won’t.

We decided to give wolves and dogs a choice. They could begfor food from somebody who could see them, or fromsomebody whose vision was obscured. We explored threedifferent ways of blocking a human’s vision: the “blind” humanmight have her back turned, she might have a bucket over herhead, or she might hold a book in front of her face.

You might expect that one of twothings would happen: dogs andwolves would understand what itmeans that somebody cannot see youand always choose the seeing personin preference to the blind person, orthey might not under-stand thereforejust choose at random. That is notwhat we found. We found that fordogs and wolves it makes a bigdifference how you obscuresomebody’s vision.

The wolves understood just fine that ifsomebody turns her back on you, youshould not waste your time trying tobeg from her. On the other hand, ifthe blinded person cannot seebecause she has a bucket or book infront of her eyes the wolves don’t care- they continue begging from a personblinded in those ways.

When we got back home toGainesville, Florida, we repeated the

test on pet dogs and also on stray dogs at our local countypound. Again you might think that if dogs understand what itmeans to see and be seen, then they would only ever beg fromthe person who could see them not matter how the human’svision is obscured. Furthermore, you might think that either alldogs have this skill ornone of them do.

That is not what we found either. The dogs we tested at thecounty pound performed similarly to the wolves. A few of themhad some understanding that a person with her back turnedwas not going to deliver treats, but the other two conditionsmeant nothing to them.

Pet dogs were considerably more successful on this task. Mostpet dogs comprehended the implications of turning your back,but most of them also understood that a person with a bookover her face is not going to give treats, and some of themeven understood that a person with a bucket over her had isnot good to beg from.

So what does this all mean? Why do wolves and pound dogsonly understand back turned, whereas the pet dogs living inthe human homes also understand the implications of a personhiding her head behind a book, and some of them evenunderstand that a person with a bucket over her head will notdeliver treats?

4004 East 800 NorthBattle Ground, Indiana, 47920P:: (765) 567-2265F: (765) 567-4299W: WolfPark.org

This article is copyrighted © and can not be used without express permission of Wolf Park.For permission contact: Admin@WolfPark.org

We think these results are very difficult to explain in terms ofanything to do with what might have happened to dogs duringtheir 15,000 years of evolution to become what they are today.Dogs at the county pound - who are just as much members ofthe species Canis familiaris as any other dogs - had only avery limited understanding of the implications of human vision.

What we think these results mean is that the life experiences ofan animal are crucial to understanding what they can deduceabout what people do. The wolves of Wolf Park are well lovedby their human caretakers who interact with them a lot, butnone the less nobody ever goes into the wolf enclosure andthen sits down to read. For this reason the wolves have nounderstanding of what a book over someone’s face mightimply. In this regard, Wolf Park wolves are similar to dogs atthe county pound - they too do not have people come in andread with them. On the other hand, pet dogs surely have quitea lot of experience of interacting with people who at some pointgrow tired of giving treats and settle down with a book ormagazine - game over.

People who have been interacting with the wolves and givingthem treats do quite often turn their backs when they have runout of treats or are ready to end the interaction for somereason. The staff often uses this back turn as a signal to thewolves that what they are doing needs to stop for more goodthings to happen. (This might be used for example if a wolf isbeing too pushy and demanding attention.) Pound dogs havelikely also had experience of caregivers turning their backs andleaving them. These are the kinds of experiences we believeare essential if a dog or wolf is going to understand that itshould not waste time begging from somebody with her backturned.

So where does that leave us with the bucket? Speaking fromfirst hand experience, I can say that to the human inside thebucket it is the most complete cutting - off of contact from theoutside world of any of the conditions we tested. So why donone of the wolves or the pound dogs, and only a smallminority of pet dogs understand this massive barrier blockingcontact between the human and the outside world? Againwolves very rarely have a reason to interact with people whohave buckets-or anything remotely like buckets-over theirheads. In fact, the bigger puzzle for us is why there were fourpet dogs who did successfully avoid begging from the personwith the bucket over her head. We tried to think of lifeexperiences that a dog might have that might prepare them forsomebody with a bucket on her head. We asked the owners ifthey had any ideas, but they did not. We can only assume thatthese dogs had past experiences with people in helmets orchildren playing with boxes on their head, that somehow set upthe conditions for them to notice that a person with somethingcovering her head is not very responsive to them.

Dogs and wolves can be very astute readers of our actions andintentions, but they do this by comparing our behavior to theirpast experiences with us - they are not mind readers in thestrong sense. Now to find where the dog has put my shoes.

Dr. Clive Wynne is Associate Professor of Psychology andleader of the Canine Cognition and Behavior group at theUniversity of Florida. He was educated at University CollegeLondon and Edinburgh University in Scotland and has studiedanimal behavior in Britain, Germany, the U.S. and Australia inspecies ranging from pigeons to dunnarts (a mouse-sizedmarsupial). His findings have been published in numerousscientific reports as well as in psychology Today, AmericanScientist and the New York Times. He is the author of atextbook Animal Cognition: The Mental Lives of Animals andeditor in chief of the journal Behavioral Processes. His mostrecent book is Do Animals Think? (Princeton University Press,2004). More information about the Canine Cognition andBehavior group is available on the web at:www.caninecognition.com.