Tolerant Dogs and Aggressive Wolves: Scientists Debunk the Myth

Dogs are called "mans' best friend" for a good reason. The relationship between humans and dogs has been present for centuries. But how did this relationship first get started? Scientists have long assumed that humans preferred particularly tolerant animals for breeding. Now, though, researchers have found that this may not be the case.

In this latest study, the researchers decided to investigate whether or not dogs are less aggressive and more tolerant towards their conspecifics than wolves. The scientists carried out several behavioral tests on dogs and wolves. The animals were hand-raised in the Wolf Science Center in Lower Austria and were kept in separated packs of wolves and dogs. In all, the researchers tested nine wolves and eight mongrel dogs.

Pairs of animals consisting of a high-ranked and low-ranked animal were fed together: either a bowl of meat or a large bone. The researchers found that while low-ranked wolves often defended their food against the high-ranked partner and showed aggressive behavior as often as high-ranked wolves, the behavior was different in dogs. Low-ranked dogs held back and accepted the threats of the dominant dog. Overall, though, neither wolves nor dogs showed a lot of aggressive behavior.

"Wolves seem to be more tolerant towards conspecifics than dogs that seem to be more sensitive to the dominance hierarchy," said Friederike Range, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This was shown by the fact that also low-ranked wolves can challenge their higher-ranked partners and the dominant animals tolerate it, while in dogs aggression was a privilege of the higher-ranked partners."

It's likely that when humans domesticated dogs, they chose the most submissive individuals. Dog-human interactions are more about living together without conflicts rather than equality.

"Wolves are very tolerant to their conspecifics," said Range. "This was shown by the fact that high-ranked wolves accepted the threat behaviors by their lower-ranked conspecifics in the feeding experiment. This tolerance enables wolf-wolf cooperation which in turn could have provided a good basis for the evolution of human-dog cooperation."

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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