Canis lupus hominis

Dogs have some inherited people reading skills that even habituated and socialized wolves never develop.

The real important difference between wolves and dogs isn’t that nebulous term called intelligence. For my purposes, discussion about intelligence has relevance only when talking about my own species, and I am fully aware that talking about intelligence in humans is, well,  also nebulous. See Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man.

Until relatively recently, most ethologists talked about how much more intelligent wolves were than dogs. The famous experiment by Dr. Harry Frank of the University of Michigan used a malamute (which is inbred corruption of the original Artic sled dog), a malamute/wolf cross, and a pure wolf. The wolf learned to open the door by watching the researchers turning the knob. The wolf cross eventually also eventually opened it, and the dog never did.

We do know that wolves have proportionally larger brains than dogs, and that evidence coupled with the Frank experiment is supposed to tell us that wolves are far more intelligent than dogs.

I have had three golden retrievers that, when confronted with a door knob, also learned to open it. In fact, one golden learned it, and the other dog learned it solely from watching the other dog. My data flies in the face Dr. Frank’s research. Now, the only dogs I’ve had that figured out to open it are golden retrievers. So does that mean that golden retrievers are far more intelligent than Norwegian elkhounds?

No. And I wouldn’t make such a stupid argument. I remember one elkhound could open an unlatched gate using his muzzle. He was the only dog in the group to do that.

Wolves are capable of forming coordinated attacks on prey species. It is generally said that dogs are incapable of doing this. However, I don’t think that researchers have ever paid much attention to what happens when you release 50 foxhounds, and one of them decideds to chase a deer instead. The dogs suddenly become wolves. It just takes one dog to turn the how pack of fox chasers into deer-killers. They head off the deer and coordinate ambush attacks on the deer, and yes, they do bring them down. Feral packs of dogs that live where garbage is relatively scarce do form packs and hunt; however, almost no research is done on these dogs, simply because they don’t live long. In rural areas, free roaming packs of dogs are killed. In fact, they are a real hazard to society. In one of the local papers, I read a story about a pack of dogs, breed not given, that actually killed a full-sized donkey that was protecting her foal from them. Because these packs don’t last long in rural areas, they aren’t widely studied.

The truth is dogs and wolves are different, but those differences are a blend rather than a sharp cut off. There are wolfish dogs, and there are doggish wolves.

However, the most important difference between the two animals is this.

Dogs might have smaller brains than wolves. If wolves were computers, they have bigger hard drives. However, dogs have a program for reading people. It’s just like with a computer. If you want to use a word processor on a machine with high storage hard drive and there isn’t one installed, it doesn’t matter how much you work with it, you won’t be able to type anything on that machine.

We have circus lions and tigers. They responde relatively well to associative learning. We don’t have circus wolves.

And that’s because wolves have a very hard time learning from us. It may have something to do with the centuries of persecution from our species. I don’t know.

Dogs, however, have a very easy time learning behaviors from us. They are not only neotenized. They are also humanized.

And that’s the important difference.