Chimpanzees share
many of our genes, but dogs have lived with us for so long and
undergone so much domestication that they are now serving as a
model for understanding human social behavior, according to a new
paper.
Cooperation, attachment to people,
understanding human
verbal and non-verbal communications, and the ability to
imitate are just a handful of the social behaviors we share with
dogs. They might even think like us at times too, according to the
paper, which has been accepted for publication in the journal
Advances in the Study of Behavior.
While there is no evidence to
support that dogs and humans co-evolved their laundry list of
shared behaviors over the past 10,000 to 20,000 years, the
researchers believe adapting to the same living conditions during
this period may have resulted in the similarities.
Lead author Jozsef Topal explained
to Discovery News "that shared environment has led to the emergence
of functionally shared behavioral features in dogs and humans and,
in some cases, functionally analogous underlying cognitive
skills."
Topal, who is based at the
Institute for Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, is
one of the world's leading canine researchers. He and his team
argue that dogs should serve as the "new chimpanzees" in
comparative studies designed to shed light on human
uniqueness.
"In my view, pet dogs can be regarded in
many respects as 'preverbal infants in canine's clothing,'" he
said, adding that many dog-owner relationships mirror human
parental bonds with children.
In one of many recent studies
conducted by the team, Topal and his colleagues taught both a
16-month-old human child and mature dogs to repeat multiple
demonstrated actions on verbal command -- "Do it!," shouted in
Hungarian.
The actions included turning
around in circles, vocalizing, jumping up, jumping over a
horizontal rod, putting an object into a container, carrying an
object to the owner or parent, and pushing a rod to the
floor.
The dogs "performed surprisingly
well and at a comparable level to the 16-month-old child," Topal
said.
Multiple studies mentioned by the
authors also support that dogs exhibit all three primary types of
social behavior that humans evolved when they split from
chimpanzees 6 million years ago. The first is "sociality," or
organization into groups where members are loyal to each other and
display reduced
aggression.
The second is synchronization,
where following shared social rules and even taking on each others
emotions helps to strengthen group unity. The researchers, for
example, say that, "when approached by an unfamiliar person showing
definite signs of friendliness and threat in succession, dogs show
rapid changes of emotional and behavioral response in accordance
with the human's attitude."
The third is "constructive
activity," where individuals within a group cooperate and
communicate with each other to achieve goals. Dogs can also
distinguish rational from irrational human communications, Topal
said.
The scientists additionally
believe dogs are good models for human social behavior because
studies can compare and contrast domesticated dogs with wolves, and
then with humans.
Marc Hauser, a professor and
director of the Cognitive Evolution Lab at Harvard University,
fully agrees that dogs offer a good model for understanding human
behavior.
"The dog has come into its own as
a great new model for understanding the mind in general, and the
evolution of the human mind in particular," Hauser told Discovery
News. "Not only have we lived with dogs for thousands of years, but
because of this relationship, we have acted as an agent of
selection to modify aspects of their behavior and
minds."
"Now, perhaps for the first time,
students of animal behavior, psychology, neuroscience,
anthropology, philosophy and veterinary medicine will unite to
provide deeper insights into the evolution of dogs and the
evolution of humans," he added. "I for one am very excited about
this opportunity, which is why we have followed the lead of other
labs, and started our own dog lab!"