The results of current wolf-dog studies on human-directed behaviors seem to suggest that domestication has acted on dogs' general attitudes and not on specific socio-cognitive skills. A recent hypothesis suggests that domestication may have increased dogs' overall sociability (hypersociability hypothesis). The aim of the present study was to test one aspect of the hypersociability hypothesis, whereby dogs should be more interested in social human contact compared to wolves, and to investigate the relative roles of both domestication and experience on the value that dogs attribute to human social contact. We compared equally raised wolves and dogs kept at the Wolf Science Center (WSCw, WSCd) but also dogs with different human socialization experiences i.e., pet dogs and free-ranging dogs. We presented subjects with a simple test, divided in two phases: in the Pre-test phase animals were exposed to two people in succession. One person invited the animal for a social/cuddle session (contact provider) and the other fed the animal (food provider). In the Test phase, animals could choose which of the two persons to approach, when both stood in a neutral posture. We directly compared WSCd with WSCw and free-ranging dogs with pet dogs. We found that in the Pre-test, WSCd and free-ranging dogs spent more time with the contact provider than WSCw and pet dogs, respectively. The results regarding the free-ranging dog and pet dog comparison were surprising, hence we conducted a follow-up testing pet dogs in a familiar, distraction-free area. Free-ranging dogs and this group of pet dogs did not differ in the time spent cuddling. In the test phase, WSCd were more likely than WSCw to approach the two experimenters. However, neither for the WSCd-WSCw comparison nor for the free-ranging dogs-pet dogs comparison, we could find a clear preference for one person over the other. Our findings support the idea that domestication has affected dogs' behavior in terms of their overall interest in being in proximity with a human partner also in case of dogs with a relatively sparse socialization experience (free-ranging dogs). However, it remains unclear what the driving motivation to interact with the human may be.

中文翻译：

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驯化和经验对狗和狼与人类伴侣社会互动的影响。


当前对人类主导行为的狼狗研究结果似乎表明，驯化作用于狗的一般态度，而不是特定的社会认知技能。最近的一项假设表明，驯化可能增加了狗的整体社交能力（超社交假设）。本研究的目的是测试超社交性假设的一个方面，即与狼相比，狗应该对人类社会接触更感兴趣，并调查驯化和经验对狗赋予人类社会价值的相对作用接触。我们比较了狼科学中心（WSCw、WSCd）饲养的同等饲养的狼和狗，还比较了具有不同人类社会化经历的狗，即宠物狗和自由放养的狗。我们向受试者提供了一个简单的测试，分为两个阶段：在预测试阶段，动物连续接触两个人。一个人邀请动物参加社交/拥抱活动（联系提供者），另一个人给动物喂食（食物提供者）。在测试阶段，当两人都处于中立姿势时，动物可以选择接近两个人中的哪一个。我们直接将 WSCd 与 WSCw 以及自由放养的狗与宠物狗进行比较。我们发现，在预测试中，WSCd 和自由放养的狗与联系人提供者相处的时间分别多于 WSCw 和宠物狗。自由放养的狗和宠物狗的比较结果令人惊讶，因此我们在熟悉的、无干扰的区域对宠物狗进行了后续测试。自由放养的狗和这组宠物狗在拥抱的时间上没有差异。在测试阶段，WSCd 比 WSCw 更有可能接近两位实验者。 然而，无论是 WSCd-WSCw 比较还是自由放养的狗与宠物狗的比较，我们都无法发现一个人比另一个人有明显的偏好。我们的研究结果支持这样的观点，即驯化影响了狗的行为，即它们对与人类伙伴接近的整体兴趣，对于社交经验相对稀疏的狗（自由放养的狗）也是如此。然而，目前尚不清楚与人类互动的驱动动机是什么。