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By Root 678 0

and dogs simpletons. In actual fact, historically theories have oscillated between claiming dogs to be more intelligent, or wolves to be the smarter of the two. Science is often contingent on the culture in which it is practiced, and these theories reflect the then-prevailing ideas about animal minds. The accumulated data of dog and wolf behavior, though, leads to a more nuanced position. Wolves seem to be better at solving certain kinds of physical puzzles. Some of this skill is explainable by looking at their natural behavior. Why did wolves readily learn the rope-pulling task? Well, they do a lot of grabbing and pulling on things (like prey) in their natural environment. Some of the difference can be traced to dogs' more limited requirements for living. Having been folded into the world of humans, dogs no longer need some of the skills that they would to survive on their own. As we'll see, what dogs lack in physical skills, they make up for in people skills.

AND THEN OUR EYES MET …

There is a final, seemingly minor difference between the two species. This one small behavioral variation between wolves and dogs has remarkable consequences. The difference is this: dogs look at our eyes.

Dogs make eye contact and look to us for information—about the location of food, about our emotions, about what is happening. Wolves avoid eye contact. In both species, eye contact can be a threat: to stare is to assert authority. So too is it with humans. In one of my undergraduate psychology classes, I have my students do a simple field experiment wherein they try to make and hold eye contact with everyone they pass on campus.

Both they and those on the receiving end of their stares behave remarkably consistently: everyone can't wait to break eye contact. It's stressful for the students, a great number of whom suddenly claim to be shy: they report that their hearts begin to race and they start sweating when simply holding someone's gaze for a few seconds. They concoct elaborate stories on the spot to explain why someone looked away, or held their gaze for a half second longer. For the most part, their staring is met with deflected gazes from those they eyeball. In a related experiment, they test gaze in a second way, verifying our species' tendency to follow the gaze of others to its focal point. A student approaches any publicly visible and shared object—a building, tree, spot on the sidewalk—and looks fixedly at one point on it. Her partner, another student, stands nearby and surreptitiously records the reactions of passersby. If it's not rush hour and raining, they report finding that at least some people stop in their tracks to follow their gaze and stare curiously at that fascinating sidewalk spot: surely there must be something.

If this behavior is unsurprising, it is because it is so human: we look. Dogs look, too. Though they have inherited some aversion to staring too long at eyes, dogs seem to be predisposed to inspect our faces for information, for reassurance, for guidance. Not only is this pleasing to us—there is a certain satisfaction in gazing deep into a dog's eyes gazing back at you—it is also perfectly suited to getting along with humans. As we will see later in this book, it also serves as a foundation for their skill at social cognition. We not only avoid eye contact with strangers, we rely on eye contact with intimates. There is information in a furtive glance; a gaze mutually held feels profound. Eye contact between people is essential to normal communication.

Hence a dog's ability to find and gaze at our eyes may have been one of the first steps in the domestication of dogs: we chose those that looked at us. What we then did with dogs is peculiar. We began designing them.

FANCY DOGS

The label on her cage said "Lab mix." Every dog in the shelter was a Lab mix. But surely Pump was born of a spaniel: her black, silky hair fell against her slender frame; her velvet ears framed her face. In sleep she was a perfect bear cub. Soon her tail hairs grew longer and feathery: so she's a golden