If you’re looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, “selfish” might not top the list.
But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido’s reputation for being caring is all a ruse – at least if you’re a fellow dog.
A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria, found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.
The study’s authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.
Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a “giving” symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.
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