Abstract

A wide array of species throughout the animal kingdom has shown the ability to distinguish between quantities. Aside from being important for optimal foraging decisions, this ability seems to also be of great relevance in group-living animals as it allows them to inform their decisions regarding engagement in between-group conflicts based on the size of competing groups. However, it is often unclear whether these animals rely on numerical information alone to make these decisions or whether they employ other cues that may covary with the differences in quantity. In this study, we used a touch screen paradigm to investigate the quantity discrimination abilities of two closely related group-living species, wolves and dogs, using a simultaneous visual presentation paradigm. Both species were able to successfully distinguish between stimuli of different quantities up to 32 items and ratios up to 0.80, and their results were in accordance with Weber’s law (which predicts worse performances at higher ratios). However, our controls showed that both wolves and dogs may have used continuous, non-numerical cues, such as size and shape of the stimuli, in conjunction with the numerical information to solve this task. In line with this possibility, dogs’ performance greatly exceeded that which they had shown in other numerical competence paradigms. We discuss the implications these results may have on these species’ underlying biases and numerical capabilities, as well as how our paradigm may have affected the animals’ ability to solve the task.

Highlights

  • The ability to discriminate different quantities proves to be a very useful tool for humans and animals alike

  • Our data suggest that pet dogs are able to distinguish between two numbers, and that their performance in these quantity discrimination tasks decreases as the ratio increases

  • In line with the available literature, we found that wolves are able to distinguish between quantities of increasing ratios

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Summary

Introduction

The ability to discriminate different quantities proves to be a very useful tool for humans and animals alike. In a seminal study, McComb et al (1994) found that lionesses were less likely to approach an audio playback of three unfamiliar female lions than a playback of a single female and groups of two were less likely to approach the speaker than groups of three or more This was the first of a number of studies to show that group-living animals are able to assess resource-holding potential (i.e., the ability to acquire or defend resources; Parker, 1974) on the basis of relative group size (e.g., chimpanzees: Wilson et al, 2001; hyenas: Benson-Amram et al, 2011; howler monkeys: Kitchen, 2004; banded mongooses: Furrer et al, 2011; dogs: Bonanni et al, 2010, 2011; and wolves: Harrington and Mech, 1979; Cassidy et al, 2015)

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