Which is smarter, a dog or a wolf?
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Are dogs smarter than wolves? | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/animals/dogs/are-dogs-smarter-than-wolves
Dogs are said to have originated from the domestication of wolves over 15,000 years ago. They became popular as pets during the Victorian era from 1837 to 1901, and from this period dog breeding became widespread. Past research has pointed out that during the evolutionary process associated with domestication, dogs acquired the ability to stare with ' puppy dog eyes ' that move people, and there were clear changes in the structure and size of the brain associated with specific abilities such as smell and motor skills.
It turns out that human breeding has changed not only the appearance of dogs but also the structure of their brains - GIGAZINE
On the other hand, Juliane Breuer, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Education in Germany, said that even though dogs have evolved and acquired various abilities through domestication, it is not possible to say that they are smarter than wolves. 'You can't say for sure whether dogs or wolves are smarter, because we always say that both are adapted to their environment,' Breuer said.
An animal's cognitive abilities are measured by a variety of skills that fall into two categories: social cognitive abilities, which are an individual's ability to interact with other animals, and non-social cognitive abilities, which are how an animal processes and manipulates the physical world around it. According to Breuer, dogs and wolves have different cognitive abilities suited to their respective lifestyles.
The pointing test is often used as a common experiment to measure the cognitive abilities of dogs and wolves. In the pointing test, food is hidden on one side of a cup placed upside down on a table, and the dog is asked to point or mark the side where the food is located to see if they can find the food. A 2021 study showed that when the pointing test was repeated with 44 puppies and 28 baby wolves, the dogs were twice as successful in finding the food as the wolves.
However, this research result only shows that dogs can have a high level of social interaction with humans, but does not mean that they have high cognitive abilities. In a study conducted by Breuer et al. in 2017, when a cup containing food was shook, both dogs and wolves recognized that there was food in the cup, but when an empty cup was subsequently shook, the dog mistakenly thought that there was food in it, but the wolf did not react. As a result, Breuer concluded that wolves have a better understanding of the causal relationship that 'the sound is made because there is food in it' than dogs.
According to Friederike Lenzi, founder of the Wolf Science Center in Austria and an animal researcher, wolves are generally better at cooperating with each other, while dogs tend to be better at working with humans. Lenzi says that their abilities are often completely different, and that various experiments on dogs and wolves are being used to better understand how dogs have adapted and evolved, so it is difficult to say which one is smarter.
'There seems to be something more innate about dogs' cognitive abilities, like being able to understand pointing in a pointing test or understand the intention behind a person's gestures, but I don't think it makes much sense to rank them as more intelligent because of that,' said Hannah Salomons, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University who studies cognition in dogs and wolves. 'When you put two people side by side and try to decide who is smarter, it's hard to compare the different areas they excel at, and the same is true for animals like dogs and wolves.'
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