Great research that speaks to the power of the pack! Check out the video as well as the referenced links below!
“Wolves generally have a stronger exploratory urge to investigate things,” Friederike Range, a researcher at the Wolf Science Center and the University of Vienna, said in a press release. “However, they clearly outperformed the dogs when co-operating was the only chance for success.”
It’s long been supposed that domestic dogs should be better at cooperation since they have more docile temperaments, but that doesn’t seem to be a match for the wolf’s strong pack dynamic, according to the study, published Monday in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To test it out, the researchers created a puzzle where the only way for the animals to access a tasty treat (in this case, a slab of meat), was if a pair of animals worked together to simultaneously drag two ropes. If only one rope was pulled, the puzzle would tilt and they wouldn’t be able to get to the reward. All of the animals were previously familiar with pulling a rope to get a treat, but they had never seen this exact challenge before.
References and pulled from these articles: