A team from Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig examined the relationship between dog owners and their animals in five culturally distinct regions: Germany, Madagascar, Mongolia, Peru, and the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. In all five regions, “astonishing similarities” emerged, the researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports.
The dogs understood human pointing gestures, communicated actively with their owners, and sought guidance from them in uncertain situations. “We had expected to find clear cultural differences, but we were able to determine that the dog-human relationship is astonishingly universal worldwide,” said cognitive psychologist Juliane Bräuer from the University of Jena. The study focused on hunting dogs, as cooperation is particularly close in this context.
Humans also described their dogs as reliable partners, and almost all said that their lives were better because of the dog. The researchers see this as an indication that the close bond is deeply rooted in evolutionary history – humans and dogs may have benefited from each other as early as around 30,000 years ago.
Source: www.spiegel.de
