Wolves come out smarter than dogs

Domestic dogs may have lost some of their innate animal skills when they came in from the wild, new research suggests.

In a study comparing wolves and dogs living in near-identical environments, wolves were better at working some things out, particularly at grasping the notion of cause and effect.

The tests, carried out by an international team at the Wolf Science Center in Austria and published in Scientific Reports, involved the animals having to choose between two objects – one containing hidden food and the other empty.

The aim was to see whether the animals could make use of communicative cues, such as direct eye contact and pointing gestures, to choose the correct container.