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      Effects of selection for cooperation and attention in dogs

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          Abstract

          Background

          It has been suggested that the functional similarities in the socio-cognitive behaviour of dogs and humans emerged as a consequence of comparable environmental selection pressures. Here we use a novel approach to account for the facilitating effect of domestication in dogs and reveal that selection for two factors under genetic influence (visual cooperation and focused attention) may have led independently to increased comprehension of human communicational cues.

          Method

          In Study 1, we observed the performance of three groups of dogs in utilizing the human pointing gesture in a two-way object choice test. We compared breeds selected to work while visually separated from human partners (N = 30, 21 breeds, clustered as independent worker group), with those selected to work in close cooperation and continuous visual contact with human partners (N = 30, 22 breeds, clustered as cooperative worker group), and with a group of mongrels (N = 30).

          Secondly, it has been reported that, in dogs, selective breeding to produce an abnormal shortening of the skull is associated with a more pronounced area centralis (location of greatest visual acuity). In Study 2, breeds with high cephalic index and more frontally placed eyes (brachycephalic breeds, N = 25, 14 breeds) were compared with breeds with low cephalic index and laterally placed eyes (dolichocephalic breeds, N = 25, 14 breeds).

          Results

          In Study 1, cooperative workers were significantly more successful in utilizing the human pointing gesture than both the independent workers and the mongrels.

          In study 2, we found that brachycephalic dogs performed significantly better than dolichocephalic breeds.

          Discussion

          After controlling for environmental factors, we have provided evidence that at least two independent phenotypic traits with certain genetic variability affect the ability of dogs to rely on human visual cues. This finding should caution researchers against making simple generalizations about the effects of domestication and on dog-wolf differences in the utilization of human visual signals.

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          Most cited references19

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          The domestication of social cognition in dogs.

          Dogs are more skillful than great apes at a number of tasks in which they must read human communicative signals indicating the location of hidden food. In this study, we found that wolves who were raised by humans do not show these same skills, whereas domestic dog puppies only a few weeks old, even those that have had little human contact, do show these skills. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways.
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            Human-like social skills in dogs?

            Domestic dogs are unusually skilled at reading human social and communicative behavior--even more so than our nearest primate relatives. For example, they use human social and communicative behavior (e.g. a pointing gesture) to find hidden food, and they know what the human can and cannot see in various situations. Recent comparisons between canid species suggest that these unusual social skills have a heritable component and initially evolved during domestication as a result of selection on systems mediating fear and aggression towards humans. Differences in chimpanzee and human temperament suggest that a similar process may have been an important catalyst leading to the evolution of unusual social skills in our own species. The study of convergent evolution provides an exciting opportunity to gain further insights into the evolutionary processes leading to human-like forms of cooperation and communication.
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              A single IGF1 allele is a major determinant of small size in dogs.

              The domestic dog exhibits greater diversity in body size than any other terrestrial vertebrate. We used a strategy that exploits the breed structure of dogs to investigate the genetic basis of size. First, through a genome-wide scan, we identified a major quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome 15 influencing size variation within a single breed. Second, we examined genetic variation in the 15-megabase interval surrounding the QTL in small and giant breeds and found marked evidence for a selective sweep spanning a single gene (IGF1), encoding insulin-like growth factor 1. A single IGF1 single-nucleotide polymorphism haplotype is common to all small breeds and nearly absent from giant breeds, suggesting that the same causal sequence variant is a major contributor to body size in all small dogs.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Behav Brain Funct
                Behavioral and Brain Functions : BBF
                BioMed Central
                1744-9081
                2009
                24 July 2009
                : 5
                : 31
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Dept. of Ethology, Eötvös University, H-1117, Budapest, Pázmány P. s. 1/c., Hungary
                [2 ]Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
                Article
                1744-9081-5-31
                10.1186/1744-9081-5-31
                2731781
                19630939
                ff261a6d-1d12-4102-80d7-5c0a402ced94
                Copyright © 2009 Gácsi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 2 February 2009
                : 24 July 2009
                Categories
                Research

                Neurology
                Neurology

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