Wolves discriminate quantities better than dogs

Being able to mentally consider quantities make sense for any social species. This skill is important during the search for food, for example, or to determine whether an opponent group outnumbers one’s own. Scientists from the Messerli Research Institute at the Vetmeduni Vienna studied how well dogs can discriminate between different quantities and discovered that wolves perform better than dogs at such tasks. Possibly dogs lost this skill, or a predisposition for it, during domestication. People and animals have been shown to discriminate between quantities. Lions, chimpanzees and hyenas, for example, will only approach a group of attackers if their own group outnumbers that of the intruders. These animals use numerical information to make decisions about their social life. The comparison showed that dogs were unable to discriminate between difficult comparisons such as two pieces of food versus three or three pieces versus four. The wolves, in comparison, fared much better.