A new study has shown that dogs and wolves could find hidden food if they could watch the humans hide it. This showed that these dogs did not solely depend on their sense of smell to find the food.
Observational Spatial Memory in Dogs
As part of the study, the researchers tested eight mongrel dogs and nine timber wolves to find eight, six, or four hidden food caches. This was executed with the following conditions: getting to observe the human hiding the food and not getting to observe the process.
The researchers discovered that both animals spotted the first five caches quickly and with lesser search efforts if they could see the storing process. This was opposed to when they did not witness it. This suggests that the animals did not depend on their sense of smell to find the food.
This shows that wolves and dogs could have observational spatial memory, which refers to when an animal learns by observing a different animal or interacting with it. This is an animal intelligence marker and has been seen in several animals.
Observational spatial memory necessitates that the animal be capable of object permanence skills, which refers to remembering items they do not see. Object permanence has been seen in several corvids, such as jackdaws and ravens.
Sense of Smell
However, the researchers cannot discount the possibility that the dogs and wolves also depended on their sense of smell to find food. They cannot conclude that each food item that the animals found during the tests was remembered through the storing process. This was demonstrated by how later caches were not found faster in the tests than in controlled trials.
The researchers explain that the high retrieval rates during the control trials show that odor cues also played a role in finding the food caches.
Canine Intelligence
Interestingly, the wolves and dogs got better at finding food as the experiments continued. The authors note that the animals had a similar success rate in later trials covering eight caches as their experience increased.
This reveals that the dogs and wolves were motivated to keep on finding food and developed a better strategy for searching over time and experience.
The wolves were also observed to become more effective in finding the food when they saw and did not see the storing process. In such a case, the wolves outperformed the dogs. The authors suggest this could be due to differences in persistence and motivation, not observational spatial memory, among the dogs and wolves. This could be due to the trait alteration of dogs as they got domesticated.
The researchers add that though dogs' willingness to adjust to humans may have been affected by domestication, the findings match with earlier studies that suggest that dogs and wolves do not differ that much in terms of cognitive capacities. The findings also match the researchers' hypothesis that dogs and wolves harbor observational spatial memory and that the two animals are different regarding motivation and persistence in solving challenges related to food.
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