Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm.

ABSTRACT: When facing an unsolvable problem, dogs exhibit spontaneous human-oriented behaviours (e.g. looking at the human partner, gaze alternations between the human and the target) sooner and for longer than domestic cats and hand-raised wolves. These behaviours have been interpreted as interspecific communicative acts aimed to initiate interaction. Here, we compare the emergence of human-oriented behaviours (e.g. orientation towards humans, orientation alternations, vocalizations) in similarly raised family dogs and miniature pigs utilising an unsolvable task paradigm which consists of Baseline (no task), Solvable and Unsolvable phases. Relative to the Baseline phase in which both species showed human-oriented behaviours to a similar extent, during the Unsolvable phase dogs showed more and pigs

SUBMITTER: Perez Fraga P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7829225 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature