Would You Detour with Me? Association between Functional Breed Selection and Social Learning in Dogs Sheds Light on Elements of Dog–Human Cooperation

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Dogs have become inseparable from humans and show an excellent capacity to coexist and cooperate with us. Currently, there is vivid interest among scientists and enthusiasts towards the origins of those skills that enable dogs to embrace the perfect companion role. Many wish to know whether particular dog breeds, or breed types, show differences when it comes to interacting with humans. Here, we used a robust grouping criterion—whether a dog belongs to the cooperative or independent working dog type—to see if work-related selection in the past may affect how these breeds learn from the behaviour of a human. In this study, dogs had to obtain a treat/toy reward from behind a V-shaped fence by performing a detour in three consecutive trials. Our main result showed that cooperative dogs improved their detour speed when they observed the demonstrator; however, independent dogs did not improve. As we also included several non-related breeds in the groups, these results indicate that selecting for cooperativity or individual working ability in various dog breeds could affect dogs’ capacity and willingness to pay close attention to the behaviour of humans. Our results provide an important insight into the understanding of how dogs match their behaviour to ours in everyday situations. ABSTRACT: Interspecific social learning is a main synchronizing mechanism that enables dogs to adapt to the anthropogenic niche. It is not known whether dogs in general possess the capacity of learning from humans or whether more recent selective events have affected their ability to learn from humans. We hypothesized that cooperative and independent working dog breeds may behave differently in a social learning task. Dogs (N = 78 from 16 cooperative and 18 independent breeds) had to detour a transparent, V-shaped wire mesh fence. The experiment consisted of three one-minute-long trials. The control condition did not include a demonstration. In the demonstration condition, the experimenter placed a reward in the inside corner by walking around the fence. Cooperative dogs reached the target significantly faster, while independent dogs did not detour faster in trials 2 and 3 after the human demonstration. Detour latencies were not associated with the keeping conditions and training level of the subjects. As we assembled both test groups from several genetically distantly related breeds, we can exclude the explanation that higher cooperativity emerged only in particular clades of dogs; instead, functional selection for particular working tasks could enhance capacities that affect a wide range of socio-cognitive traits in dogs.