these researchers had their dogs and wolves treated identically, and concluded that "even after being raised by humans, wolves simply do not see humans as potential social partners."

but my interpretation is that they learned that wolves, after being raised by humans as if they were dogs, do not see humans as potential social partners. and this distinction matters, because my family's pet dog/wolf saw us all as his subordinates, until we learned the different way to act around a wolf.

if you show a wolf tons and tons of affection, like it was a dog, it thinks you're trying to kiss its ass and take a subordinate position to it.

all these researchers really learned here, in my opinion, was that if you communicate to a wolf that you are not to be taken seriously as a partner, it will not take you seriously as a partner.

I think the possibility absolutely remains open that researchers who had bothered to do their homework first might be able to produce results where the wolves looked to the humans for help just as often as the dogs did.

if you baby a wolf in the way that we baby dogs in 2015, you are probably not creating an entirely realistic simulation of the context within which wolves and humans first began collaborating.

They also learn which member of the family is best for each need. For example, they learned that cuddling-up with my young daughter is always a sure bet, they rarely ask my oldest son for that level of attention.

There's also the empathy. I've seen some amazing things, like a female GSD jumping up on the bed to cuddle-up with my wife when she got a phone call with bad news. It's freaky.

They know they are not allowed in my office and stop and sit or lay down at the door. But they can also read when I am receptive to them coming in for a quick hug. They actually seem to understand when I need a break. It's an amazing relationship that I couldn't do without.

This is the almost-universal behavior of low-status individuals to high-status ones (in a boardroom everyone looks at the boss to know how to react to a joke).

So it could mean, not that dogs "use humans" but rather that they recognize humans (and specifically their trainer) as the leader of their pack, which wolves do not.

It would be interesting to do this experiment again with dogs and a human that they absolutely don't recognize as a leader (a toddler that they have never seen before, for example).

My guess is, if there are two humans in the room, a "recognized leader" and a "recognized non-leader", and if the non-leader knows how to solve the riddle, and the leader does not, then the riddle will never be solved because the dog will never seek the help of the non-leader.

I say this in jest, but it sort of makes you wonder about who is using whom. Oftentimes, I notice how pets (esp. cats[0]) are looked after 24/7 by their owners, groomed, given food, shelter, etc. and pretty much do nothing but continuously solicit pleasure. Traditionally, we like to think of animals as serving humans, but in a case like this, isn't the opposite true?

[0] I note that cats are not fully domesticated animals. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/man-cat-...

Wife and I have the seemingly dumbest labrador in the world. We adopted him at an old age (8-ish) so we didn't get the chance to raise or train him ourselves.

But after we picked him up, it really only took about two days for him to settle in and learn exactly where everything was that he wanted, and he quickly learned how to signal when something was needed. He knew exactly WHAT we were good for, whether that be feeding, letting him out, play, back scratches that he can't reach, etc.

We were super impressed with his ability to learn a daily routine too. "When they get home, they feed me so I'll stand by my bowl, then after I'm done they play with me so I'll grab my toy, then they take me on a walk so I'll stand by my leash"

I.e., his side of communication adds up to no more than what in a dog might be a couple of tones of bark, a fast tailwag, and the grabbing of a leash to indicate enthusiasm for the of a walk.

> @K9TrainerTina: they were, actually. however, the 5 month old wolf pups mostly just went to sleep after initially failing to get the food, so they were excluded from the analysis.

I'm not sure if it's this episode or some other documentary, but I remember seeing the food experiment as well. Where wolves would not look to humans for help.

The whole documentary is worth watching, but the fox domenstication part is especially interesting.

He's a naughty puppy, but dammit if we don't love him unconditionally!

He told me that the main problem with wolves was that they are really aggressive against hunting dogs. If you split up too far from your dogs chances are high that a near wolf-pack will come, kill them in a blitz-action and run away.

Same problem arises in many humans.

And this is exactly why breeds like Chihuahua, Poodles and Labradoodles have done so well.

These types of dogs living in a Darwinist world, have no right to survive, but thanks to their human relationships they are thriving.

The big question, is this the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the human?

Makes me wonder if cars are in fact domesticated.

Cats continually police the household to detect and eliminate vermin and other such pests, as well as acting as a deterrent to keep the pests and some other animals away. This function used to be more relevant in the past than it is today, however.

That said, I agree that cats are certainly in it to live a comfortable life. There's not really enough cognitive ability for there to be an exchange of comfort and labor, so humans just took advantage of cats' inherent nature. They require a pittance of food for performing a valuable service that humans struggle with doing directly.

These days, many households no longer require the services of a cat. In those households cats provide companionship. It might sound silly to compare the companionship of an animal to that with other humans, but unlike all relationships with humans, animals are nonjudgmental and always present and affectionate regardless of the circumstances. This might be the pets' adaptation to gaming the humans, but the humans nevertheless still find it to be a valuable service. There may be health benefits as well. I don't have any studies to reference, and I haven't researched the topic, but I've heard it mentioned a number of times: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/featur...

Describing cats as semi-domesticated seems accurate. They make eye contact and many cats are clearly interested in having a relationship with you individually (not all of them are aloof). They will come to you and meow for help solving problems. They're smart enough to "ask" you to open doors and perform other actions for them. But they don't really have a dog's attentiveness and perceptiveness toward the person, nor the dog's body language and subtlety of interaction. People like cats in part because they are independent and not needy. Owners don't need to worry about a cat going crazy if left alone in a house for a few days. However, I suspect that cats would score somewhere in between dogs and wolves on the tests mentioned in the article.

As someone who's lived in a household with dogs and a cat, I never saw it that way. After all, most pets do not provide any practical service to their owners. When I threw a stick over and over to have the puppy bring it back to me, I may have been the one running the show, supposedly the master, but I always thought of it as my service to her; sure, it was enjoyable to me to have something to do outside, and to watch her speed and grace, but humans get tired of repetition a lot faster than dogs (and teaching her to do more interesting things than catch would have been quite a lot of work). Inside the house, it might have been nice seeing the older dog around, and to initiate play when I felt like it, but on the many, many occasions she decided to plop a filthy chew toy next to me on the couch (in the hope that I'd throw it - any attempt to remove the toy from the couch counted as a throw, resulting in her fetching it back to the couch!), I'd hardly associate the resulting exasperation with the feeling of having a servant. And I didn't have many actual duties myself - I'm sure this was felt double by the ones who dealt with their food and daily exercise.

But there's no need to be verbose. A pet is simply a lite version of a human child. Physically, the parent does everything for the child; the reward is emotional, and quite high to make up for the former...

minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us

One of the most fascinating parts of the sport, to me, is how much of the training is "people training" vs "dog training". At the start, there's some pretty simple dog training, e.g. if you walk over the ramp, you get a treat. That quickly turns into teaching the human how to use their body language to steer the running dog; when the dog ends up in the wrong place in the field it's, I'd say 90% of the time, the human's fault.

Anyway, on to the point of this. Me and my dog are getting to pretty good at this, and we're currently focusing on distance work; basically, me being able to run the show from half-way across the field instead of running right next to her. She has me trained so well to get closer to her. If she feels like I'm too far away, she'll steer towards me instead of going straight, and then my natural reaction is to walk towards her to help push her back on course. Unless I'm very very focused on what I'm doing, I'll end up right beside her again, even if we start 30 or 40ft away.

You don't consider that animals provide emotional comfort? And make owners exercise, as well, since you need to go walk with your pets on a daily basis?

I do however think this is a brilliant insight and in hindsight so obvious.

A nanny AI is the more rational outcome considering that if we built a AI mind, we could control its parameters (make it non-violent, etc). Also fears of being enslaved and such are positively archaic. Slavery, as an economic system, makes little sense as its more liabilities than assets. If you were to suddenly conquer the world, keeping the capitalistic system in place would make the most sense. It confers a level of control and civility when done right. No need for a violent peasant or slave uprising when most everyone can find a job, rent/buy a home, start a business, advance their careers, etc.

Sadly, I imagine these high-profile attacks on AI are causing a chilling effect from a funding and research point of view. Its sad that instead of celebrating AI as something that could help humanity, we've instead demonized it and dismissed it. Shame billionaires like Musk can so trivially control public opinion and how so few of us are skeptical of his hysterical claims.

You mean the lucky few who get to live as pets?