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![Location of the donor (Do) and receiver (Re) for each condition. Figure taken from Quervel-Chaumette et al [21].](profile/Rachel-Dale/publication/312044946/figure/fig3/AS:446735437832196@1483521436984/Location-of-the-donor-Do-and-receiver-Re-for-each-condition-Figure-taken-from.png)
Location of the donor (Do) and receiver (Re) for each condition. Figure taken from Quervel-Chaumette et al [21].
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Prosociality has received increasing interest by non-human animal researchers since the initial discoveries that suggested it is not a uniquely human trait. However, thus far studies, even within the same species, have not garnered conclusive results. A prominent suggestion for this disparity is the effect methodology can have on prosocial response...
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... Domestic dogs are a potentially good model species to study the mechanisms underlying reciprocity in non-human animal species. Apart from pet dogs demonstrating prosocial behaviour, in the context of food giving (Dale et al., 2016;Quervel-Chaumette et al., 2015; but see Dale, Despraz, et al., 2019;Dale, Palma-Jacinto, et al., 2019) and rescue behaviour (Carballo et al., 2020;Van Bourg et al., 2020), military dogs have been shown to reciprocate the receipt of food from unfamiliar conspecifics in two studies (Gfrerer & Taborsky, 2017, 2018. In the first study, military dogs were more likely to pull a tray to deliver food to a conspecific in a neighbouring enclosure if they had previously received food from an unfamiliar conspecific themselves via the same apparatus, than if they had not received food from a conspecific (Gfrerer & Taborsky, 2017). ...
... Thus, in the current study, our first aim was to determine whether pet dogs would reciprocate the receipt of food from other pet dogs using a similar setup to that of McGetrick et al. (2021). However, given that familiarity has been shown to play a crucial role in governing pet dogs' decision to donate food to a conspecific, with dogs donating to familiar but not unfamiliar conspecifics (Dale et al., 2016;Quervel-Chaumette et al., 2015), our second aim was to investigate the effect | 3 of 13 ...
... This allowed us to determine whether any button pressing observed was due to the subject wanting to provide food to the partner or whether the presence of the partner simply motivated the subject to act. This control was included as the presence of another individual has been shown to influence a subject's behaviour, including in food provisioning studies (Dale et al., 2016;Jensen et al., 2006;Zajonc, 1965). In an asocial condition, no partner was present, to determine whether the subject pressed the button for non-social reasons. ...
Reciprocity is one of the most prominent explanations for the evolution of stable cooperation. Although reciprocity has been studied for decades in numerous animal species and behavioural contexts, its underlying proximate mechanisms remain unclear. Domestic dogs provide a useful model species for the study of proximate mechanisms, though there are currently inconsistent findings regarding dogs' propensity to reciprocate. Here, we investigated whether, after minimal training, pet dogs would press a button, which remotely controlled a food dispenser, to deliver food to an enclosure occupied by a helpful conspecific that had provided them with food or an unhelpful conspecific that had not provided them with food. We included an asocial control condition in which the enclosure was unoccupied and a social facilitation control in which the food delivery mechanism was non‐functional. Whether subjects were familiar with the helpful and unhelpful conspecifics was also varied. In addition, to investigate potential mechanisms underlying reciprocity, we measured subjects salivary oxytocin concentration before and after they experienced the helpful and unhelpful acts. There was no effect of the previous helpfulness or the familiarity of the partner on the number of times subjects pressed the button. However, there was also no effect of the presence of a partner or the operationality of the food delivery mechanism on the number of button presses, indicating that subjects were not pressing the button to provision the partner. Moreover, the experience of the helpful or unhelpful act did not influence subjects' salivary oxytocin concentration. Variation in findings of reciprocity across studies appears to correspond with differing training protocols. Subjects' understanding of the task in the current study may have been constrained by the limited training received. Additional tests to verify subjects' understanding of such tasks are warranted in future studies.
... A further assumption is that animals can be habituated to the presence of human observers, who are able to distinguish between natural behaviour and behavioural responses to observers (Candea, 2013). However, many studies investigate the behaviour of captive animals or species defined in the scientific lexicon as domesticated, such as dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) (Dale et al., 2016). Domestication is defined as genetic and morphological changes from the originally-wild species as a result of generations of selection by humans to fit human preferences and agro-economic niches (Bates, 2021). ...
Conflicts that arise between people and elephants, in particular crop-raiding, are a significant and complex conservation problem wherever elephants and people occupy the same space. The generic literature on these conflicts is ecological: elephants raid crops at specific times, in specific places. However this paper will examine this conflict through individuals: crop-raiding is not carried out by all elephants at random, it is carried out by specific elephants with specific histories and experiences living, eating and interacting with people in specific ways in specific places. Elephant conservation conflict is highly emotive, highly political and can become highly personal against individual elephants. The paper will draw on almost 20 years worth of interdisciplinary data from conservation research and practice in Laikipia on a population of African elephants. Elephants here are proficient crop-raiders. So much so that the landscape has been divided into a place for elephants and a place for people by an electrified fence. Yet certain elephants manage to break the fence and evade human ordering. Wildlife managers use other methods to target specific elephants. Yet Laikipia is a fraught post-colonial landscape occupied by diverse people with different relationships and histories with elephants. This paper will examine: how the human-elephant relationship varies in Laikipia; the process and consequences of the individualisation of elephants; and how individual elephants have been targeted by and responded to various efforts to mitigate elephant conservation conflicts.
... In the stranger condition the pet dogs actually withheld food and gave more food in the control condition than in the social partner test condition! However, in the token choice experiment, while the dogs gave more food to the familiar partner, and less food to the stranger in the social partner test conditions than in the nosocial control condition, there was no significant difference in comparison to the social facilitation controls, indicating that the presence of the partner was sufficient to trigger or inhibit pressing the giving token (Rachel Dale et al., 2016). ...
... Additionally, the dogs performed well in the motivation sessions -suggesting that they were willing to keep working when the rewards were for themselves. The performance of the WSC dogs differs from the results found with pet dogs at the Clever Dog lab, who were quite willing to give food to their familiar partner but not to a stranger (Rachel Dale et al., 2016;Quervel-Chaumette, Dale, Marshall-Pescini, & Range, 2015b), similarly to our wolves. Various explanations could account for this difference including 1) the different socialization/training history of the animals or 2) the paradigms we used differed somewhat. ...
... Various explanations could account for this difference including 1) the different socialization/training history of the animals or 2) the paradigms we used differed somewhat. The pet dogs were studied using a bar-pull paradigm, where the animals had to pull in a table to provide food for the partner (Quervel-Chaumette et al., 2015b) and a token choice paradigm, where dogs had the option to touch a wooden token with their nose that delivered a reward to an adjacent receiver enclosure (Rachel Dale et al., 2016). The latter task was actually very similar to the touch screen task we used at the WSC. ...
In this chapter, we review studies comparing the social learning and cooperative abilities of wolves and dogs, both with conspecifics and humans. As regards social learning, their performance is similar in basic tasks involving local enhancement and observational memory. But when it comes to paying attention to the exact details of a demonstration and imitating a specific action, wolves clearly outperform dogs. Whether these differences stem from differences in cognitive abilities or rather from differences in general purpose mechanisms such as attention, working memory, inhibition or motivation still needs to be explored. As regards cooperation, the studies reviewed show that wolves and dogs share with us at least some of the abilities that seem to be important for cooperation: they show some prosocial tendencies, are inequity averse, can coordinate their actions with conspecific partners, and have a basic understanding of the role of their partner in cooperative interactions. However, the studies show that while wolves cooperate successfully with conspecifics as well as with human partners, dogs only succeeded with humans. This suggests that the dogs’ failure to cooperate with conspecifics is not due to cognitive limitations but rather due to limited tolerance towards each other in feeding contexts. While both species cooperate with humans, their behaviour revealed some remarkable differences suggesting that wolves rather lead (and perhaps just expect humans to follow), whereas dogs are more inclined to wait for the human partners to take the initiative and then follow their lead.
... More recent studies also show steeper social hierarchies in dogs than in wolves. Dale et al. (2016) gave similarly raised groups of dogs and wolves living in conspecific groups a carcass to feed on. Where subordinate wolves were able to feed to a similar level as their more dominant groupmates, dominant dogs monopolized the carcass at the expense of subordinate group members. ...
Dogs’ remarkable success in living in a human-dominated world rests on a set of adaptations to cohabitation with humans. In this paper, I review the nature of these adaptations. They include changes in reproductive and foraging behavior from their ancestor species, wolves, which can be understood as adaptations to the change from hunting live prey to feeding on human food residues. Dogs also show several changes in social behavior which are more controversial and even somewhat paradoxical. Contrary to theories of canine domestication which view dogs as less aggressive and more cooperative than wolves, several studies show that dogs’ social interactions with conspecifics are more hierarchical and competitive than are wolves’. As scavengers rather than hunters, dogs do not need to cooperate with conspecifics the way that wolves do. But how then can we understand dogs’ willingness to cooperate with humans? I propose an integrated account of dogs’ social behavior that does not assume that dogs need to recognize the species-identity of the individuals with whom they interact. Because of the overlap in formal signals of dominance and submission between dog and human and people’s complete control over the resources dogs need, I propose that people occupy a status of “super-dominance” over dogs. This conception suggests several new lines of research which could shed light on the human-dog relationship to the benefit of both partners.
... For example, in a tray-pulling prosociality task, pet dogs pulled a tray to draw food towards a familiar conspecific in an adjacent enclosure significantly more times than they did in control conditions [21]. Likewise, in a token choice prosociality task, dogs chose the token that would result in a familiar conspecific in an adjacent enclosure being rewarded [22]. ...
... The social facilitation control was included to control for the possibility that button pressing was stimulated by the presence of a particular human, rather than the intention to provide the human with food. Such social facilitation effects [67] have been demonstrated with dogs [22] and chimpanzees [68] in similar experimental setups. ...
... A similar explanation has been put forward (see Carballo et al. [23]) in relation to Quervel-Chaumette et al.'s [28] observation of dogs failing to act prosocially towards humans in a food-giving paradigm. However, the argument that food is inappropriate in such reciprocity studies between dogs and humans is not entirely satisfactory: adult dogs also do not typically provide each other with food; yet, in at least two experimental studies, they opted to provide conspecific partners with food [21,22], and in an additional two studies, they even reciprocated the receipt of food from conspecifics [30,35]. It is, notwithstanding, a worthwhile point that food as a resource in our studies may have been problematic; to the best of our knowledge no experimental study has shown prosociality from dogs to humans in a food-giving paradigm [28]. ...
Domestic dogs have been shown to reciprocate help received from conspecifics in food-giving tasks. However, it is not yet known whether dogs also reciprocate help received from humans. Here, we investigated whether dogs reciprocate the receipt of food from humans. In an experience phase, subjects encountered a helpful human who provided them with food by activating a food dispenser, and an unhelpful human who did not provide them with food. Subjects later had the opportunity to return food to each human type, in a test phase, via the same mechanism. In addition, a free interaction session was conducted in which the subject was free to interact with its owner and with whichever human partner it had encountered on that day. Two studies were carried out, which differed in the complexity of the experience phase and the time lag between the experience phase and test phase. Subjects did not reciprocate the receipt of food in either study. Furthermore, no difference was observed in the duration subjects spent in proximity to, or the latency to approach, the two human partners. Although our results suggest that dogs do not reciprocate help received from humans, they also suggest that the dogs did not recognize the cooperative or uncooperative act of the humans during the experience phase. It is plausible that aspects of the experimental design hindered the emergence of any potential reciprocity. However, it is also possible that dogs are simply not prosocial towards humans in food-giving contexts.
... While studies have tested prosocial behaviour in mammals [2] showing that some species seem to possess the capacity for spontaneous prosocial acts [13][14][15], one still needs to be careful when extracting a concept from its human context in which it may signify things that are embedded in cultural traditions and have specific symbolic value. Specific acts that are highly valued in human society as voluntary good acts (the good Samaritan syndrome [16]) may be adaptations in animals (requiring no decision making or specific moral compass). ...
... Increasingly, animal studies have taken up the challenge in more wide-ranging studies and across a variety of mammals. Well-controlled experiments were conducted in a range of mammals, from dogs [15] to primates [17], many such studies simply termed prosocial choice tests (PCT) [14]. In the restrictive environment of laboratories and the inability to do research using language and create complex social situations, avian studies were often confined to testing sharing and prosocial behaviour with food or tokens that could be exchanged for food later [18][19][20]. ...
... hyenas en as a result of a range of environmental pressures. Capturing the social development in birds leading to mate choice, is exceedingly rare and the few experiments that have been conducted on establishing a link between juvenile friendships and later pair formation tend to be of very recent origin [15] but, as will be argued here, deserves our careful attention. ...
... However, even within the social domain, there is evidence for wolves outperforming dogs. For instance, a number of studies showed that dogs cooperate poorly with each other (Bräuer et al. 2013c;Dale et al. 2016;Marshall-Pescini et al. 2017), suggesting that dogs were selected to cooperate specifically with humans (Bräuer et al. 2013a;Bräuer 2015;Range et al. 2019). In other words, the specific social environment of the domestic dog created a specific selection pressure for a specific cognitive skill such as the ability to cooperate with humans, but not for cooperative ability in general. ...
... However, even within the social domain, there is evidence for wolves outperforming dogs. For instance, a number of studies showed that dogs cooperate poorly with each other (Bräuer et al. 2013c;Dale et al. 2016;Marshall-Pescini et al. 2017), suggesting that dogs were selected to cooperate specifically with humans (Bräuer et al. 2013a;Bräuer 2015;Range et al. 2019). In other words, the specific social environment of the domestic dog created a specific selection pressure for a specific cognitive skill such as the ability to cooperate with humans, but not for cooperative ability in general. ...
Using the comparative approach, researchers draw inferences about the evolution of cognition. Psychologists have postulated several hypotheses to explain why certain species are cognitively more flexible than others, and these hypotheses assume that certain cognitive skills are linked together to create a generally “smart” species. However, empirical findings suggest that several animal species are highly specialized, showing exceptional skills in single cognitive domains while performing poorly in others. Although some cognitive skills may indeed overlap, we cannot a priori assume that they do across species. We argue that the term “cognition” has often been used by applying an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric one. As a result, researchers tend to overrate cognitive skills that are human-like and assume that certain skills cluster together in other animals as they do in our own species. In this paper, we emphasize that specific physical and social environments create selection pressures that lead to the evolution of certain cognitive adaptations. Skills such as following the pointing gesture, tool-use, perspective-taking, or the ability to cooperate evolve independently from each other as a concrete result of specific selection pressures, and thus have appeared in distantly related species. Thus, there is not “one cognition”. Our argument is founded upon traditional Darwinian thinking, which—although always at the forefront of biology—has sometimes been neglected in animal cognition research. In accordance with the biocentric approach, we advocate a broader empirical perspective as we are convinced that to better understand animal minds, comparative researchers should focus much more on questions and experiments that are ecologically valid. We should investigate nonhuman cognition for its own sake, not only in comparison to the human model.
... Social tolerance is indeed a socioecological factor significantly differing between dogs and wolves living in packs. Dale, Quervel-Chaumette, Huber, Range, and Marshall-Pescini (2016) compared food sharing in the two species. When a carcass was presented to the group, dominant individuals of both species defended the carcass more than subordinates. ...
... Subordinate dogs took the risk more often than subordinate wolves. This might be explained by the fact that dominant dogs more often monopolize food resources (Dale et al., 2016). Therefore, subordinate dogs may be more used to situations in which food is not shared, and they may nonetheless be motivated to take the risk, even if they do not get their share in every trial. ...
... In other words, previous cofeeding might have been essential to motivate dominant wolves and subordinate dogs to take the risk, as they were not willing to abandon their share, whereas their partners' strategy simply followed as a consequence. Thus, our findings suggest that species differences between wolves and dogs in their hierarchy structure and food-sharing habits (Dale et al., 2016) may influence the way individuals coordinate their actions in this social dilemma (Melis et al., 2006b;Suchak et al., 2016). Figure 2. Box plot representing the data distribution for the probability of cofeeding, separately for trials in which dominants took the risk, and trials in which subordinates took the risk, from a generalized linear mixed model. ...
Cooperative hunting is generally considered to be a cognitively challenging activity, as individuals have to coordinate movements along with a partner and at the same time react to the prey. Wolves are said to engage in cooperative hunting regularly, whereas dogs could have maintained, improved, or reduced their cooperative skills during the domestication process. We compared the performance of individuals from two wolf packs and two dog groups with similar gender and rank structure. Members of these groups were tested in dyads with a problem-solving paradigm that involved aspects of a hunting-like situation. Subjects needed to coordinate their actions in order to get food. They were confronted with a social dilemma, in which an individual benefit from being selfish, unless the partner also chooses the selfish alternative, in which case the whole dyad loses. In the task, one partner was required to draw a barrier toward it by rushing forward, allowing the other partner to access the food, at which point both partners were allowed to access the food. Most dyads could solve the problem, with significant variation in their performance but no differences between species. However, the probability of taking the risk in a dyad depended on the species and rank of the individual and on cofeeding in the dyad. The results of this study show that wolves do not always outperform dogs when coordinating their actions, but that the cooperative behavior of Canis depends on many factors, including rank, type of task, and tolerance within the dyad. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... Other species, in which the same control conditions had been implemented to examine whether prosocial choices were made with the goal to deliver food to the neighbouring chamber, obviously understood the test contingencies and responded according to the predictions. Showing the exact opposite pattern to our parrots, capuchin monkeys [22], dogs [62], chimpanzees [20] and other primate species [63] decreased their prosocial choices in the absence of a partner but increased prosocial choices when they could access both compartments. We propose two non-exclusive explanations for the parrots' behaviour in the control conditions: first, the parrots might not have understood the spatial arrangement of the test room. ...
... Using a more intuitive set-up (e.g. open barrier partially, as in most other prosocial choice studies [22,62]) might have helped the parrots to succeed (i.e. choose most beneficial option consistently). ...
... In particular in comparative studies, experimental procedures should be kept as similar as possible, while still acknowledging species-specific ecology and behaviour. Consequently, the PCT might be well suited for primates [22] and potentially dogs ( [62], although see the discrepancy in results to [28]), but might be less ecologically valid for birds. In order to further extend our knowledge about the phylogenetic distribution of other-regarding behaviours, more investigations of prosocial tendencies within the parrot order (Psittaciformes) are required, involving both paradigms that have been used on non-avian taxa and more intuitive and ecologically relevant paradigms (e.g. ...
Prosociality is defined as a voluntary, typically low-cost behaviour that benefits another individual. Social tolerance has been proposed as a potential driver for its evolution, both on the proximate and on the ultimate level. Parrots are an interesting species to study such other-regarding behaviours, given that they are highly social and stand out in terms of relative brain size and cognitive capacity. We tested eight African grey parrots in a dyadic prosocial choice test. They faced a choice between two different tokens, a prosocial (actor and partner rewarded) and a selfish (only actor rewarded) one. We found that the birds did not behave prosocially when one subject remained in the actor role; however, when roles were alternated, the birds’ prosocial choices increased. The birds also seemed to reciprocate their partner's choices, given that a contingency between choices was observed. If the food provisioned to the partner was of higher quality than that the actor obtained, actors increased their willingness to provide food to their partner. Nonetheless, the control conditions suggest that the parrots did not fully understand the task's contingencies. In sum, African grey parrots show the potential for prosociality and reciprocity; however, considering their lack of understanding of the contingencies of the particular tasks used in this study, the underlying motivation for the observed behaviour remains to be addressed by future studies, in order to elucidate the phylogenetic distribution of prosociality further.
