Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) use human and conspecific social cues to locate hidden food.

Abstract

Ten domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) of different breeds and ages were exposed to 2 different social cues indicating the location of hidden food, each provided by both a human and a conspecific (for a total of 4 different social cues). For the local enhancement cue, the approached the location where food was hidden and then stayed beside it. For the gaze and point cue, the stood equidistant between 2 hiding locations and bodily oriented and gazed toward the 1 in which food was hidden (the human also pointed). Eight of the 10 subjects, including the one 6-month-old juvenile, were above chance with 2 or more cues. Results are discussed in terms of the phylogenetic and ontogenetic processes by means of which dogs come to use social cues to locate food. The use of social cues to locate food and other important entities in the environment is a skill with obvious adaptive benefits. For example, an informant may look toward an entity, and this look may be accompanied by both head and body orientation to the same location and sometimes by other behaviors such as vocalizations or travel toward the target location. The ability of observer individuals to exploit social cues of this type enables them to benefit from knowledge possessed only by specific groupmates. Despite the potential importance of this social ability for the foraging of many highly social species such as mammals, there has been very little systematic research in this area. Virtually all of the relevant research has been conducted with nonhuman primates and their skills of gaze following. There are two basic experimental paradigms, and these have produced different sets of results. The first paradigm is simple gaze following in which 1 individual orients its head and eyes in a certain direction (sometimes accompanied by gestures), and another individual either does or does not orient itself similarly. For example, Itakura (1996) had a human approach nonhuman primate individuals and either look or look and manually point to the right or left. Many of the 11 different nonhuman primate species tested visually tracked the pointing gesture, but only 1 (an orangutan) visually followed gaze direction by itself. Using a similar methodology, Povinelli and Eddy (1996a) also found positive results for 6 juvenile chimpanzees following the gaze of

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