Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is a classic episode from
Speaker 1: our previous host, Christian Sagar. I've known some dogs that
Speaker 1: are pretty smart. I've also known some that weren't. Bless them,
Speaker 1: but could wolves be smarter? Hey, brain Stuff, it's Christian Sager.
Speaker 1: My dogs Winchester and see Blue. They are real smart.
Speaker 1: So I was intrigued when I read a new study
Speaker 1: that said wolves are more intelligent in some ways than
Speaker 1: my dogs and all their canine friends, whether you have
Speaker 1: a chocolate lab or a coonhound. Scientists believe that some
Speaker 1: modern dogs and wolves descended from a common ancestor between
Speaker 1: eleven thousand and thirty thousand years ago. The new study,
Speaker 1: which was published in the September Journal of Scientific Reports,
Speaker 1: is by an international team of researchers at the Wolf
Speaker 1: Science Center in Vienna, Austria. They found domesticated dogs cannot
Speaker 1: make the connection between cause and effect wolves, however, can.
Speaker 1: They came to that conclusion by testing and comparing how
Speaker 1: the two species searched for food after giving them hints
Speaker 1: about where it was located. Researchers used fourteen dogs and
Speaker 1: twelve socialized wolves in their experiments. During the tests, the
Speaker 1: animals had to choose between two containers, one with food
Speaker 1: and one without. The first thing researchers did was determined
Speaker 1: whether the animals could make sense of communicative clues by
Speaker 1: pointing and looking at the container with the food. Researchers
Speaker 1: next wanted to see how the dogs and wolves responded
Speaker 1: to behavioral cues. The experiment or pointed to the container
Speaker 1: with food, but did not make eye contact with the animals. Finally,
Speaker 1: in the last experiment, the animals had to infer themselves
Speaker 1: which container had the hidden food, using only causal clues
Speaker 1: like noises made when the experiment or shook the container
Speaker 1: with the food. Both the wolves and the dogs did
Speaker 1: well on the communicative clue tests all found the hidden food.
Speaker 1: Both species, however, failed the behavioral cue portion. Without direct
Speaker 1: eye contact, neither a dog nor wolf could find the food.
Speaker 1: During the last part of the test, however, only the
Speaker 1: wolves could make casual inferences as to where the food
Speaker 1: was located. In other words, the scientists said the wolves,
Speaker 1: not the pooches, understood cause and effect. Study author Michelle
Speaker 1: lamp from the Netherlands reminded us, however, that The differences
Speaker 1: can be explained by the fact that wolves are more
Speaker 1: persistent to explore objects than dogs, as because dogs are
Speaker 1: conditioned to receive food from us, whereas wolves have to
Speaker 1: find food themselves in nature. What shocked researchers was that
Speaker 1: the wolves were able to interpret direct eye to eye contact.
Speaker 1: That understanding of communicative cues, researchers said may have facilitated domestication.
Speaker 1: The study is unique also in that it used dogs
Speaker 1: that lived in both packs and with families, but the
Speaker 1: results of the dogs were independent of living conditions. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by John Partano and produced by Tristan
Speaker 1: Neil and Tyler Clang. For more on listen lots of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.