Has domestication made dogs dumber?

Elf at the English language Wikipedia [creativecommons license] from Wikimedia Commons
Results of a new study evaluating animals’ ability to create and compare mental representations of quantities of food suggest that domesticated dogs might have limited information-processing skills compared with wolves, their closest wild cousins. The findings are consistent with a hypothesis that domestication has altered information processing in dogs by attenuating the selective pressures that favor cognitive improvement.

Lab Anim. (NY) 44, 45 (2015).
view full text (login required)

Leave a comment