Abstract
Other-regarding preferences are considered to be the foundation of human cooperation. However, the evolutionary origin of this behavior in humans remains poorly understood. So far, comparative studies in primates have led to mixed conclusions probably due to methodological differences relating to both task complexity and the types of control conditions used. Moreover, no clear link between phylogenetic relatedness and prosociality has been found, suggesting that other convergent selection pressures may play a role in the evolution of such behaviors. Here, using one of the cognitively less demanding tasks, we show for the first time, that dogs can behave pro-socially by donating food to a conspecific partner, but only if the partner is familiar. This highlights the importance of considering the social relationships between individuals when testing animals for other-regarding behaviors. Moreover, by including a social control condition, we show that the dogs’ prosocial response was not due to a simple social facilitation effect. The current findings support recent proposals that other convergent selection pressures, such as dependence on cooperative activities, rather than genetic relatedness to humans, may shape a species’ propensity for other-regarding behaviors.
Highlights
Since the number of trials, total pulls and giving pulls (0/1) were highly correlated and dogs hardly ever pulled the empty tray (0/0, mean range across conditions ± s.e.m., n = 16 individuals: 0.6 to 1.5 ± 0.34), in the following we report only the number of trials where donors pulled the giving tray since this best reflects the actual food delivered by the donor
By using a simplified version of the classic prosocial bar-pulling paradigm, we found a significant difference in the extinction rate of giving across conditions, with donors working for longer and providing more food for a familiar receiver than a stranger
The similar extinction rate of giving across the three control conditions confirms that dogs understood that the food was inaccessible to both themselves and the partner in all three situations
Summary
No interaction between the session order and condition emerged, showing that the dogs delivered more food to the familiar partner than the stranger and pulled the giving tray more often with the familiar partner than in all control conditions independently of when the test session was conducted.
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