A new study of young wolves suggests they are indeed capable of making doglike attachments to people.
In the late 1970s, archaeologists made a stunning find in northern Israel. In a 12,000-year-old village, where families buried loved ones under their homes, they uncovered the remains of a woman and a young dog, her hand resting on the puppy’s chest.
The findings add support to the idea that wolves may harbor some traits once thought exclusive to dogs, says Monique Udell, a human-animal interaction researcher at Oregon State University, Corvallis, who was not involved with the work. But other experts say the study was not well designed and therefore is not convincing.
When the animals were 23 weeks old, a caregiver led them one at a time into a mostly empty room. Over the course of several minutes, the caregiver exited and entered the room, sometimes leaving the wolf alone, sometimes leaving it with a complete stranger. The team repeated the experiment with 12 23-week-old Alaskan huskies, which they’d raised similarly since puppyhood.
In addition, dogs barely paced–a sign of stress—during the test, whereas wolves paced at least part of the time. That’s not surprising, Udell says, as even hand-raised wolves are more jittery around people. “The wolves are acting like you would expect wolves to act.” She speculates that the pacing experiment may imply that other wild animals could form strong bonds with humans. Does that hand-raised cheetah at the zoo view its caregiver as just a food dispenser, or a comforter, she wonders. “These relationships may be happening even when we’re not aware of them.”
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