Testing the myth: tolerant dogs and aggressive wolves

摘要: Cooperation is thought to be highly dependent on tolerance. For example, it has been suggested that dog–human cooperation enabled by selecting dogs for increased tolerance and reduced aggression during the course of domestication (‘emotional reactivity hypothesis’). However, based observations social interactions among members captive packs, a few dog–wolf comparisons found contradictory results. In this study, we compared intraspecies wolves raised kept under identical conditions investigating their agonistic behaviours cofeeding pair-wise food competition tests, situation directly linked cooperation. We in wolves, dominant subordinate dyads monopolized showed similar extent, whereas these were privileges high-ranking individuals. The fact rarely challenged higher-ranking partners suggests steeper dominance hierarchy than wolves. Finally, as well only rare weak towards each other. Therefore, suggest are sufficiently tolerant enable wolf–wolf cooperation, which turn might have basis evolution (canine hypothesis).