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Abstract

Despite being closely related, dogs consistently perform worse than wolves in independent problemsolving tasks. These differences in problem-solving performance have been attributed to dogs' greater reliance on humans, who are usually present when problem-solving tasks are presented. However, more fundamental motivational factors or behavioural traits such as persistence, motor diversity and neophobia may also be responsible for differences in task performance. Hence, to better understand what drives dogs' and wolves' different problem-solving performance, it is essential to test them in the absence of humans. Here, we tested equally raised and kept dogs and wolves with two unsolvable tasks, a commonly used paradigm to study problem-solving behaviour in these species. Differently from previous studies, we ensured no humans were present in the testing situation. We also ensured that the task was unsolvable from the start, which eliminated the possibility that specific manipulative behaviours were reinforced. This allowed us to measure both persistence and motor diversity more accurately. In line with previous studies, we found wolves to be more persistent than dogs. We also found motor diversity to be linked to persistence and persistence to be linked to contact latency. Finally, subjects were consistent in their performance between the two tasks. These results suggest that fundamental differences in motivation to interact with objects drive the performance of wolves and dogs in problem solving tasks. Because correlates of problem-solving success i.e. persistence, neophobia, and motor diversity are influenced by species' ecology, our results support the social ecology hypothesis that postulates that the different ecological niches of the two subspecies (dogs have evolved to primarily be scavengers and thrive on and around human refuse, while wolves have evolved to primarily be group hunters and have a low hunting success rate) at least partly shaped their behaviours.