Who's Friendlier, a Hand-Raised Wolf or a Dog?

[SamAdams]

Interesting article if you're a dog person -

(There's even a bullet point summary in the beginning for those lacking the time to read the whole article now)


http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2017/09/29/what-makes-dogs-so-friendly.aspx?utm_source=petsnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20170929Z1&et_cid=DM159740&et_rid=67803687

[JTQ]

I watch most of the canine shows on TV from National Geographic to the History Channel to Animal Planet. I've seen an example of the "puzzle box". It was quite fascinating. Both the wolves and dogs worked at it for a while, but the dogs eventually stopped and waited, assuming their human would get the meat out of the box for them. The wolves just kept on working on it.

Another test, not wolf related was the "three cup hidden item" game. They played it with dogs and chimpanzees who you'd think would be on a higher intelligences level than the dogs. However, dogs are so used to working with humans, even the slightest human tell, such as eye movement, would tip the dog off to which cup the ball was under. Even when the human pointed to the correct cup, the chimps still couldn't get it right consistently.

[Chance]

There's a lot more to being domesticated than being friendly.

[SamAdams]

I remember reading somewhere that the average member of a wolf pack is smarter than the smartest dog youre likely to come across. Its been quite awhile and I don't recall what supporting evidence they had to back that up.
It does make sense that dumb wolves likely wouldn't last long in the wild, though. And if they used some kinda task test, maybe the dogs gave up while the wolves continued to work at it till they were successful.

[Peally]

They're pretty smart, and they're also extremely wild animals.

But then again, humans have guns and airplanes, so the dogs might not be too stupid for hanging around them.