Wolves feel affection for humans

Dogs show a natural attachment to their human handlers. They look to them as a source of protection and comfort and feel considerable anguish when they are forced to separate. This emotional connection is, without a doubt, the strongest that the human being has established with an animal. However, it is unclear when that link arose. If it was forged little by little during the domestication of dogs at least 15,000 years ago or if the character trait was already within the wolves, their ancestors.

A new study carried out by researchers at the University of Stockholm (Sweden) concludes that bonding with people is not an exclusive trait of dogs. Young wolves also manifest it. The researchers tested twelve dogs and ten wolves at 23 weeks in an experiment known as ‘strange situation’, originally created to study attachment between human infants and their mothers. The test measures how the stress of facing an unknown person or environment causes the subject to seek the proximity of her caregiver. The more you seek, the greater the attachment.

Wolves stress buffer

As explained in the magazine ‘Ecology and Evolution’All the animals in the experiment were raised by the researchers from when they were ten days old, before they could open their eyes. They were bottle-fed and provided with all kinds of care.

In one such test, a familiar person and a stranger took turns entering and leaving a testing room, with the goal of creating a somewhat strange and stressful situation for the animal. The researchers wanted to know if wolves and dogs could discriminate between the familiar person and the strange person. That is, if they showed more affection, and spent more time greeting and in physical contact with the familiar person than with the unknown person. If wolves and dogs did the same thing, this would indicate that this ability is not exclusive to dogs, that is, it has not evolved specifically in dogs.

“That was exactly what we saw”says Christina Hansen Wheat, Professor of Ethology and head of the study. “It became very clear that wolves, like dogs, preferred the familiar person over the strange one. But what was perhaps even more interesting is that while dogs were not particularly affected by the test situation, wolves were. The wolves circled the room. But when the familiar person, who had been with the wolves all his life, re-entered the room, the pacing behavior stopped, indicating that the keeper acted as a social stress buffer for the wolves.”Explain. “This also complements the existence of a strong bond between the animals and the familiar person”underlines.

selective advantage

For the researcher, these findings contradict the hypothesis that the skills necessary to form an attachment with humans emerged in dogs only after they were domesticated. Hansen Wheat believes that the similarities between dogs and wolves may tell us something about the origin of the behavior we see in our pets.

And while it may come as a surprise to some that wolves would be able to connect with a person in this way, she thinks in hindsight it makes sense, too. “Wolves showing attachment to humans might have had a selective advantage in the early stages of dog domestication”suggests.

Font: JUDITH DE JORGE / ABC

Reference article: https://www.abc.es/ciencia/pueden-lobos-sentir-apego-humanos-20220920164954-nt.html