Presentation Details
| The Effect of Human Demonstrated Local Enhancement on Dogs and Dingoes Karen Jesch, Angie Johnston. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA |
Abstract
Local enhancement is a social learning mechanism by which an animal’s attention is drawn to one location following the presence of another animal, increasing the observer’s likelihood of visiting the enhanced location. The ability of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to use local enhancement to correctly identify the location of hidden food has been well documented, while their relative the Australian dingo (Canis dingo) has not yet been assessed. The current study set out to investigate under what conditions local enhancement from a human occurs, and how canines use it as a strategy even when it indicates a sub-obtimal foraging location. This study tested 30 dogs and 10 dingoes on a two-plate choice task with three demonstration types varying in communicativeness. Both dogs and dingoes performed significantly worse in the presence of a demonstrator relative to the control condition with no demonstrator (dogs: ps < .001; dingoes: ps ≤ 0.028). There were no species differences in the non-communicative (p = 0.76) or communicative (p = 0.98) test conditions. The two test conditions did not differ from one another for either species (ps ≥ .85).
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
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