Everyone has their own and usually very strong opinions about dog training and how much we can compare dogs to wolves. So instead of focusing on that, let’s look at an experiment that was done on dog teamwork. Many species can work together in order to reach a mutual goal, in this case: food. A box with two ends of rope are needed. If one animal pulls one end of the rope, they can’t pull the food, which is on top of the box, towards them. Effort from both animals is required and they need to pull on the rope at the same time. The end result is some food on either end of the box as a reward.
Elephants, birds, primates, wolves and quite a few other species have been tested so far with great results. Domesticated dogs, however – not so great. As you can see in the video below, the dogs were clueless. Instead of looking at each other, they were staring and wagging at the other side of the fence. Presumably their owner or another human was standing there. They were looking to them for the answer!
Does this make them not as smart as wolves? I don’t think so. Surely, a wolf can outsmart a dog in quite a few scenarios. Though I would argue, that this is also the case vice versa. A wolf would be completely lost trying to figure out most of the things that dogs do effortlessly in our “human world”. Dogs were the first species to be domesticated and have had a long time to be bred into what we have today. They have evolved to communicate and look to us for answers and that seems like a wonderful thing!