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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_communication#Evolution_of_Dog-Human_Communication

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Dogs are one of human’s closest friends. They are life companions and seems like where there are people, there are dogs. Nowadays, many people raise dogs inside their homes and are raised widely over the world as a pet and/or for some other purposes, like hunting. When we see dogs, we can notice they are a bit different from other animals. They are smart, highly interactive with humans and their behaviors are compatible with humans. It is like they understand what we are trying to say, as if we are communicating with each other, and it seems like we are sharing our emotions with them. This brings up the question of how they have evolved, especially with their social behavior and the interaction with humans. This might be the case of convergent evolution or just a simple selection. Researchers have conducted many tests to find out more about this. I want to focus on the evolution of dogs social behavior, communication of dogs and humans, specifically about domestic dogs.

Dogs are special in a way that they have distinct traits that are like humans. Hare and Tomasello, conducted an experiment that would test this special trait found in dogs. They put some object in different non-transparent containers and then directed them in different ways, by pointing, gazing, bowing or nodding to the object direction, and placing markers in front of the target, and making dogs guess where the object is. The results were amazing (Hare and Tomasello 2005). Dogs could solve the problem better than chimpanzees, who are considered one of our most close relatives (Miklosi et al. 2003). It seemed like they know exactly what humans are trying to say. More surprisingly dogs were able to bring objects to the owner when the owner was not facing them, and even more other dogs can distinguish the difference in words, by eliminating the word that they know and bringing the one that they know (Hare and Tomasello 2005). Also, Miklosi conducted a similar experiment with dogs. He conducted a similar experiment except, he compared the dog’s behavior when human is facing and not facing them. Dogs solved the problem much better when human were looking at them (Miklosi et al. 2006). This seems like they are actually looking at our eyes and communicating with us.

How can dogs understand and communicate with us? How is this even possible? There are several hypothesis that attempt to solve this question. These reasons are still under debate by scientists, but there are basically three reasons behind this question. The first reason is the effect of their ancestor, wolf, how the wolf’s social behavior were sent over generation to generation to the dogs. Many people say that the dogs came from wolf and I have also heard of this phrase for a long time, even though I cannot quite remember where I heard this from. Some characteristics of wolves help us to understand some of the social behaviors of dogs (Hare and Tomasello 2005). Wolves are animals that live and work as a group. Based on what I learned from Dr. Herbers’ lecture, there are some advantages and disadvantages of living in a group. When living in a group, the advantages include things like group learning, better defense, genetic diversity, and division of labor. However there are also disadvantages, such as competition, spread of diseases, cheating, and overcrowding (Herbers 2014). The packs of wolves consists of strong hierarchies and of different ages. Together they help each other in hunting, catching, defending, killing prey, and many other activities (Cooper et al. 2003). This could be beneficial, but this also means that there is competition and interaction the wolves in the pack. In order to benefit from each other, they have to communicate well which each other. These social behaviors and communication that wolves have while living in groups are where researchers think the social communicative skills of dogs came from. Dogs focus on the interchange of information among them and their communication skills is selected from their ancestors, wolves (Miklosi 2009).

Dogs have lived with humans for a long time, therefore their behaviors began to mimic humans. This is a kind of “enculturation” (Reid 2008). Dogs are trained by humans, becoming very dependent on humans. Some researchers think that this dependent trait enable them to communicate better with their owners. Their communicative skills and their social behaviors develop as they grow. When the dogs were more exposed to humans, they were better at their communicative skills (Reid 2008). However, experiments found that puppies solve problems as good as the older dogs, which means the age and exposure might not be the reason of dog’s human-like behavior (Hare and Tomasello 2005).

The third reason is the domestication of dogs, how they started to live with humans inside homes, and therefore how they evolved domestic characteristics. This might be the most prominent reason of all. By living together for thousands of years, the dog’s skill eventually evolved over time whether they are by artificial selection or natural selection (Monique et al. 2009). High ability of dog understanding human comes from “selection against fear and aggression towards human” (Hare and Tomasello 2005). This lead to dog’s tameness, which is the characteristics of the domestic animals (Reid 2008). The tameness of dogs might have been naturally selected when they started to live with humans or were already selected for the tameness. Some experiments with other animals have been conducted to prove this. Researchers used foxes and domesticated, which means raised and maintained by human. The domesticated fox was as good as the dogs in problem solving, using the hints of the human (Hare and Tomasello 2005). Not only that, the foxes began to act like the domesticated dogs, for example they wagged their tails like dogs, rather than running away when they encountered people (Reid 2008).

Another example of the effects of domestication is the New Guinea Singing Dog (NGSD), which are an intermediate between dogs and wolves in terms of behavior and physiology. Unlike other domestic dogs, NGSD traits for not purposely selected nor they were bred by human. When NGSD were given a problem, they were not as good as dogs, but still could understand what people were trying to say (Reid 2008). Researchers found out that the exposure to humans gained the ability to understand and socially connect with humans. When they were exposed to humans, they were much better at solving problems and understanding the given ques. (Wobber et al. 2009). The social behaviors and their social cognition of dogs are not yet revealed fully. There are for sure, something special about dogs and the relationship between dogs and humans. It is important for the researchers to study more about social skills and the social relationship of dogs and humans. The research of the evolution of dog’s social behaviors might help in finding the evolution of social cognition in humans.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_behavior

Articles can be improved by to mention more about how dog's behavior changed genetically, or is there any genetical change in them. I also want to know more about how their social behavior is different from other animals, perhaps wolves or feline animals. This article do not really talk much about their evolutionary process and I think talking about this will improve this article.

One Sentence: Canine's personality and social behavior comes from pressure against selection and have gone through many generations. Citataion: Scott JP. 1967. The Evolution of Social Behavior in Dogs and Wolves. Integrative and Comparative Biology [Internet]. [cited 2014 Sept 15] 7(2):373-381. Available from: http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/2/373.short

Topic: The Evolution of Dogs and Human Communication

References:

Cooper J, Ashton C, Bishop S, West R, Mills D, Young R. 2003. Clever hounds: social cognition in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). Applied animal behaviour science. 31:229-244.

Hare B, Tomasello M. 2005. Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends in cognitive sciences. 9: 439-444.

Miklosi A, Topal J, Csanyl V. 2007. Big thoughts in small brains? Dogs as a model for understanding human social cognition. Neuroreport. 18:467-471.

Miklosi A. 2009. Evolutionary approach to communication between humans and dogs. Veterinary Research Communications. 33:S53-S59.

Miklosi A, Topal J, Csanyl V. 2004. Comparative social cognition: what can dog teach us? Animal Behaviour. 67: 995-1004.

Monique U, Dorey N, Wynne C. 2009. What did domestication do to dogs? A new account of dogs' sensitivity to human actions. Biological Reviews. 85:327-345.

Reid P, 2008. Adapting to the human world: Dogs' responsiveness to our social cues. Behavioural processes. 80:325-333.

Wobber, V., Hare, B., Koler-Matznick, J., Wrangham, R., and Tomasello, M., 2009. Breed differences in domestic dogs' (Canis familiaris) comprehension of human communicative signals. Interaction Studies. 10:206-224.