http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...ine-news_rss20

Dogs are no better than wolves at picking up on human cues. That's the conclusion of animal psychologists who have compared the ability of the wolves and dogs to understand human hand signals.

When tasked with choosing between two paint cans based on a trainer's hand signal, tamed wolves actually proved more adept at picking the right can.

This casts doubt on the idea that domestication some 15,000 years ago imbued dogs with a window into the human mind, says Clive Wynne, an animal psychologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Rather, dogs – and tamed wolves – probably learn to associate human arm movements with treats, play and affection. Researchers who argue for a dog "theory of mind" are overlooking this obvious explanation, Wynne says.

"I think what's going on here is straightforward conditioning," he says. "Have they forgotten about Pavlov?"

Clever wolves
Wynne's study is a rebuttal to a string of headline-grabbing papers that used similar approaches to demonstrate that dogs read humans better than wolves, and even chimpanzees. He says those reports used different environments and conditions for tests on wolves and dogs.

To level the playing field, Wynne – along with UFL colleagues Monique Udell and Nicole Dorey – worked with tame wolves that have received near constant human exposure since birth. The researchers also tested both wolves and dogs under the same conditions: with familiar trainers and in outdoor enclosures.

Standing 2.5 meters from an animal, a trainer signalled one of two sand-filled paint cans placed on either side of the trainer. If the animal moved toward the correct can, it received a treat and heard a click.

Wolves picked the right pail about seven times out of 10, on average, while dogs tested under identical conditions did slightly better than chance.

Dogs that performed the same test in their homes, though, equalled the wolves' performance, while shelter dogs picked the correct pail in only three of every 10 attempts.