Dogs may not be inclined to return favors to people, at least when it involves food.
To find out, comparative psychologist Jim McGetrick and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna trained pet dogs how to use a button to get food from a nearby dispenser. Each dog was then paired with a human, visible in an adjacent enclosure, who pressed the button to dispense food in the dog’s enclosure. On separate occasions, the dog was also paired with another human who didn’t press the button.
Why didn’t dogs return the humans’ food favors? It may be that they aren’t willing to, or perhaps aren’t able to form this sort of complicated tit-for-tat social contract with humans. Or, there’s another possibility, the study authors note: The dogs simply may not have understood what was being asked of them, which could come down to how the experiment was designed.
To find out, comparative psychologist Jim McGetrick and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna trained pet dogs how to use a button to get food from a nearby dispenser. Each dog was then paired with a human, visible in an adjacent enclosure, who pressed the button to dispense food in the dog’s enclosure. On separate occasions, the dog was also paired with another human who didn’t press the button.
Why didn’t dogs return the humans’ food favors? It may be that they aren’t willing to, or perhaps aren’t able to form this sort of complicated tit-for-tat social contract with humans. Or, there’s another possibility, the study authors note: The dogs simply may not have understood what was being asked of them, which could come down to how the experiment was designed.
