Dogs Bow to Wolves as Cooperators

团队合作?狗狗不如狼

If you need help herding some sheep or retrieving a stick, you can count on your canine companion. Because dogs always seem to be keen on lending a paw. But only if their partner is a person. When it comes to cooperating with one another, dogs are truly lost…and instead it’s wolves who’ve mastered the art of teamwork. That’s according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

如果你需要放羊或者捡回一根棍子，你可以让狗狗去做这些事情。因为狗狗看起来总是非常喜欢帮助你。不过，前提是狗狗和人合作，如果是和别的什么合作的话，狗狗会不知所措……相反，狼却深谙团队合作的艺术。这是据《美国科学院论文集》杂志上的一项研究。

For thousands of years, humans have been breeding dogs that can do all sorts of neat tricks. And because pups aim to please, we’ve come to think that domestication has somehow boosted dogs’ powers of cooperation. But researchers in Austria have been wondering whether that notion could be barking up the wrong tree. Because left to their own devices, dogs are bigger loners than wolves.

数千年以来，人类一直饲养可以掌握各种技能的狗狗。因为，小狗狗的目的是取悦人类，所以，我们认为驯化狗狗可以提高狗狗的合作能力。但是，奥地利研究人员认为，这个观点可能有些不对。因为他们的研究结果证明，狗狗比狼更孤独。

“So wolves live in closely knit family packs, they cooperate in raising the young, they also cooperate in hunting and in defending their territories. So they really have a strong dependence on cooperation in many aspects of their lives. In contrast, to this free ranging dogs actually forage mostly by themselves solitarily. It’s only mothers that raise their young. And they do form packs but they tend to be somewhat more fluid, if you want.”

“狼生活在紧密的家庭关系中，它们共同养育小狼崽、共同捕获猎物、共同守护家园。所以，在生活的各个方面，狼对合作能力有很强的依赖性。然而，对于自由放养的狗狗来讲，实际上，它们会各自找各自的食物。只有狗妈妈会抚养小狗狗。狗狗们也会形成团体，但如果你愿意，实际上狗狗是有独立性的。”

That’s Sarah Marshall-Pescini of the Wolf Science Center at the University of Vienna. She and her colleagues decided to test dogs’ and wolves’ relative powers of cooperation. In the setup, a pair of animals…either two dogs or two wolves…is presented with a contraption that will allow the participants to access a tray of food…but only if both members of the team simultaneously pull on the two ends of a rope.

Sarah Marshall-Pescini 在维也纳大学狼科学研究中心工作。她和同事们决定测试一下，狗和狼的合作能力。在实验中，两只狗、两只狼一组，给它们一个巧妙的装置，这些狗和狼可以通过装置吃到到一盘食物……但是需要团队中的成员同时拉绳子。

A dozen wolves and 14 dogs took the challenge. And the results? The wolves ran circles around their doggie descendants. In some 400 attempts, the wolf teams scored a snack 100 times. Which may not sound all that impressive…until you compare it with the doggie duos, who, in nearly 500 trials, succeeded only twice.

12只狼和14只狗狗参加了这个实验测试。猜结果怎样?狼围着狗狗转圈圈。在近乎400次测试中，狼组成功获得了100次食物。这个结果勉强可以接受……但是如果和狗狗那组进行比较的话，那在将近500次的试验中，狗狗仅仅成功了2次。

Now, it’s not that dogs are less avid learners. Or that they turned tail and avoided the apparatus. Marshall-Pescini says the pooches were curious about the device.

并不是说狗狗不爱学习，也不是它们摇了摇尾巴，避开了仪器。Marshall-Pescini 说，杂种狗对于这种装置有很强的好奇心。

“What seemed to be happening was they didn’t want to get into conflict with each other. So they wouldn’t both go and try things on it but rather took it in turns. And this really hindered their capacity to cooperate.”

“似乎两只狗狗并不想发生冲突。所以，它们不会一起去尝试，而是会轮流尝试。这就阻碍了它们的合作能力的培养。”

So rather than step on each others’ toes, the hounds took turns bowing out, giving their teammate a chance at the plate. That show of social grace left the poor pups with their tummies growling. And no treat to wolf down

这些小狗没有相互帮助，而是轮流上前，给了队友摸摸盘子的机会。这种优雅的社会行为让这些可怜的小家伙们肚子咕咕乱叫。不合作，对不起，没吃的!