Figuring things out: Innovation arena in wolves and dogs

Dogs and wolves present an interesting lens through which to examine innovative behaviors, as both of their environments promote the development of innovations for different reasons. Dogs' natural environment (as free-ranging animals) is characterized by high diversity and abundance in novel feeding opportunities. Conversely, wolves live in an unpredictable and harsh environment in which adapting to sudden scarcity is vital for survival. Thus, to analyze the role of the environment in innovative behavior (both evolutionarily and ontogenetically) we studied problem-solving skills of three populations: captive wolves, "pack dogs" (raised similarly to the wolves), and pet dogs. For this, we used an "innovation arena" (after Rossler & Mioduszewska et al., 2020) consisting of 9 novel puzzle boxes presented simultaneously. Pet dogs were better at solving the boxes than their pack-living counterparts, which could point towards prior positive experiences with similar opportunities (here, human-created constructs) providing motivation to interact with novel features of the environment, which would eventually lead to innovation. We found little effect of evolution: wolves needed more time to approach the boxes (potentially due to neophobia), but both wolves and pack dogs interacted with and solved the boxes to a similar extent.