Also in evolution the human being and the dog are “biological allies”. A research

Dogs have a long and unique history of evolutionary coexistence with the human species; recent analyzes suggest that these animals, following prolonged contact with humans and the domestication process, became genetically distinct from wolves as early as 23,000 years ago.

One can therefore wonder if, following this long coexistence, it is not now possible to communicate in an innate way between dogs and humans; that is, if dogs are not able to make themselves understood by humans without the need for learning by the latter, as a result of an evolutionary co-adaptation of our species to grasp certain non-verbal signals and vice versa of the development in dogs of a code innate ability to communicate with people.

Questions of this type are of interest because they imply the possibility of coevolution between very different speciesthrough the development of innate codes of communication, which make it clear how living organisms can develop a close ecological relationship, potentially of symbiosis, through the process of domestication, which must be understood as bidirectional from an evolutionary point of view.

To answer in the case of dogs, we now have new work available, in which a group of researchers recruited 97 children aged between 20 and 47 months and recorded their interactions with three small dogs – Fiona, Henry and Seymour – at a laboratory of the University of Michigan. In published experiments, researchers separated a child from a dog via a fence, dropping toys or treats from the child’s side, just beyond the dog’s reach.

The dogs reacted naturally, showing interest in accessing the object (eg, pawing and yelping) or ignoring it.

It turned out that the children passed out-of-reach objects to the dogs twice as often when the dogs showed interest than when they ignored them, which obviously implies a statistically significant ability to capture the dog’s interest. Furthermore, children were more generally likely to provide items to dogs if they came from households with companion dogs, if the dogs were more lively and engaged in communication rather than submissive, and if the item was a treat rather than a toy.

These data show how the communicative code used by dogs with foreign humans is well understood by very young children, thus supporting the mutual communicative adaptation that occurred in the co-evolution of the two species during the domestication process.

The fact that children already accustomed to the presence of dogs were quicker to respond indicates that such behaviors are reinforced by the cultural context in which they developbut since even children who do not live with dogs still show a statistically detectable response, it shows that the basis of this behavior is now innate in our species.

The children showed a tendency to try to deliver an object to the dog anyway, but the fact that the children’s response was proportional to the dog’s interest and efforts showed that this behavior depends on the dog’s communication, with this trying the two-way evolution of the ability to collaborate.

Finally, the distinction in the behavior implemented by the children is interesting, depending on whether the object to be delivered was food or a toy: the greater propensity to react to the dog’s communication, in the case it was food, points to the confirmation of the theory that it underlies the mechanism by which domestication took place in the case of dogs.

In conclusion, we have, from these new data, direct and clear proof of how our species actually evolved thanks to an alliance with very different living beings, that in part they have even modeled some behavioral traits; this is the reason why experts in evolutionary ecology prefer to speak of a biological alliance, in the case of us humans, putting aside an anthropocentrism that still characterizes our vision of the world in too many aspects.