Spatial Problem-Solving in Working Dogs: The Combined Effect of Body-Size Awareness, Social Learning and Functional Breed Selection

Cooperative and independently working dog breeds differ in the extent of their reliance on human-given instructions; thus, they are ideal subjects for investigating dog-human interactions in a biologically relevant way. We tested N = 149 dogs from 26 cooperative and 28 independent breeds in a problem-solving scenario that combined asocial and social elements. Dogs had to detour a transparent obstacle, where we also provided a shortcut (either comfortably large or inconveniently small to pass through). Half of the subjects in each condition observed the human demonstration of how to detour the obstacle. Our main questions were whether functional breed selection would affect the body-size awareness-based decision-making, and whether breed types would differently rely on social learning. We found that dogs from both breed types equally relied on body-awareness and social learning. They mainly opted for the detour (instead of using the shortcut) and less often approached the opening directly when the door was small, plus they had observed the demonstrator before. We only found a breed-type effect in observing the demonstration, where cooperative dogs watched the demonstrator for longer. The results indicate that adaptive reliance on both intrinsic (body-awareness) and extrinsic factors (social learning) could contribute to the ubiquitous success of dogs in the anthropogenic environment.