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Simple Summary We tested horses on the impossible task paradigm, a drawback affecting the decision-making process in animals. We used the direction of the horse’s ear cup as an indicator of its visual attention in terms of visual selective attention when both ears were directed at the same target and the visual differential attention when the ears were directed differentially to the persons and to the experimental tools. We aimed to evaluate whether the latter behavior could be considered a possible support to solve the problem. The visual differential attention was the most frequent behavior when the resource was unreachable, which supports the view that this gesture could be linked to a request for help from humans to find the solution to the task. Our procedure proved to be a useful way to understand how horses try to attract human attention when they are in a restricted environment, a typical situation for horses living in stables. Abstract In order to explore the decision-making processes of horses, we designed an impossible task paradigm aimed at causing an expectancy violation in horses. Our goals were to verify whether this paradigm is effective in horses by analyzing their motivation in trying to solve the task and the mode of the potential helping request in such a context. In the first experiment, 30 horses were subjected to three consecutive conditions: no food condition where two persons were positioned at either side of a table in front of the stall, solvable condition when a researcher placed a reachable reward on the table, and the impossible condition when the food was placed farther away and was unreachable by the horse. Eighteen horses were used in the second experiment with similar solvable and impossible conditions but in the absence of people. We measured the direction of the horse’s ear cup as an indicator of its visual attention in terms of visual selective attention (VSA) when both ears were directed at the same target and the visual differential attention (VDA) when the ears were directed differentially to the persons and to the table. We also included tactile interaction toward table and people, the olfactory exploration of the table, and the frustration behaviors in the ethogram. In the first experiment, the VDA was the most frequent behavior following the expectancy violation. In the second experiment, horses showed the VDA behavior mostly when people and the unreachable resource were present at the same time. We speculate that the VDA could be a referential gesture aimed to link the solution of the task to the people, as a request for help.

We report a study examining interspecies emotion transfer via body odors (chemosignals). Do human body odors (chemosignals) produced under emotional conditions of happiness and fear provide information that is detectable by pet dogs (Labrador and Golden retrievers)? The odor samples were collected from the axilla of male donors not involved in the main experiment. The experimental setup involved the co-presence of the dog's owner, a stranger and the odor dispenser in a space where the dogs could move freely. There were three odor conditions [fear, happiness, and control (no sweat)] to which the dogs were assigned randomly. The dependent variables were the relevant behaviors of the dogs (e.g., approaching, interacting and gazing) directed to the three targets (owner, stranger, sweat dispenser) aside from the dogs' stress and heart rate indicators. The results indicated with high accuracy that the dogs manifested the predicted behaviors in the three conditions. There were fewer and shorter owner directed behaviors and more stranger directed behaviors when they were in the "happy odor condition" compared to the fear odor and control conditions. In the fear odor condition, they displayed more stressful behaviors. The heart rate data in the control and happy conditions were significantly lower than in the fear condition. Our findings suggest that interspecies emotional communication is facilitated by chemosignals. University of Naples “Federico II”; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The present study assessed how dogs weigh gestural versus verbal information communicated to them by humans in transitive actions. The dogs were trained by their owners to fetch an object under three conditions: a bimodal congruent condition characterized by using gestures and voices simultaneously; a unimodal gestural condition characterized by using only gestures; and a unimodal verbal condition characterized by using only voices. An additional condition, defined as a bimodal incongruent condition, was later added, in which the gesture contrasted with the verbal command, that is, the owner indicated an object while pronouncing the name of the other object visible to dogs. In the incongruent condition, seven out of nine dogs choose to follow the gestural indication and performed above chance, two were at chance, whereas none of the dogs followed the verbal cues above chance. The dogs, as a group, performed above chance the gestural command in 73.6% of cases. The analysis of latencies in the above-mentioned four conditions exhibited significant differences. The unimodal verbal and the gestural conditions recorded a slower performance than both the bimodal incongruent and congruent conditions. No statistical differences were observed between the unimodal and bimodal conditions. Our results demonstrate that dogs, trained to respond equally well to gestural and verbal commands, choose to follow the indication provided by the gestural command than the verbal one to a significant extent in transitive actions. Furthermore, the responses to bimodal conditions were found to be quicker than the unimodal ones.

Simple Summary The aim of this study was to test whether ovariectomy in dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) could impair a female’s ability in a socio-cognitive task. Forty pet dogs (18 intact females (IF) and 22 gonadectomized females (GF)) were tested in the object choice task paradigm using a human proximal pointing gesture. For the analysis, the frequency of correct, wrong and no-choices was collected; moreover, the latency of the correct choices was also considered. The IF group followed the pointing gestures more often than the GF group and with a lower latency whereas a significantly higher no-choice frequency was recorded for the GF group. Abstract Recent studies have underlined the effect of ovariectomy on the spatial cognition of female dogs, with ovariectomized dogs showing a clear preference for an egocentric rather than an allocentric navigation strategy whereas intact females did not show preferences. Intact females had better performances than gonadectomized females in solving a learning task in a maze. Ovariectomy also affects socio-cognitive abilities, reducing the dog’s level of attention on the owner. We tested dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in the object choice task paradigm to assess whether an ovariectomy could impair females’ ability to follow human signals. Forty pet dogs (18 intact females (IF) and 22 gonadectomized females (GF)) were tested in the object choice task paradigm using the human proximal pointing gesture. For the analysis, the frequency of correct, wrong and no-choices was collected; moreover, the latency of the correct choices was also considered. The IF group followed the pointing gestures more often than the GF group and with a lower latency, whereas a significantly higher no-choice frequency was recorded for the GF group. These results show a detrimental effect of ovariectomy on dogs’ socio-cognitive skills related to the responsiveness to human pointing gestures.

We assessed how highly trained dogs respond to gestural versus verbal signals when their handlers oran unfamiliar person asked them to perform an obedience task. Dogs were requested to perform fourdifferent actions (“Sit”, “Down”, “Stay” and “Come”) upon receiving congruent (only gestural or onlyverbal) or incongruent signals (gestural and verbal signals contradict each other).The dogs’ performance measures were the frequency of correct responses and their response latency.Generalized Estimation Equation models were used to determine whether the type of signal, the coher-ence of the signals and familiarity with the signaler influenced dogs’ responses.Our results show that the probability of dogs expressing the requested behaviour was lower when thestranger gave verbal signals, than in any of the other conditions. In the incongruent condition, the prob-ability that dogs expressed the behaviour indicated by the verbal signal was lower for signals providedby the stranger than for signals provided by the owner. The reverse was observed for gestural signals. Ingeneral, longer latencies to perform the “Come”, “Down” and “Sit” behaviours were observed in responseto the stranger’s verbal signals than when the stranger gave gestural or incongruent signals. Additionally,the response latency to the stranger’s verbal stimuli took longer than verbal stimuli were provided bythe owner in the case of “Come” (P = 0.002) and “Sit” (P < 0.001) actions.Our data support the argument that for highly trained dogs, gestural signals are less dependent uponsignal-giver familiarity, whereas verbal signals are less effective when they are given by an unfamiliarperson. Fundação para a Ciência e a tecnologia (FCT); University of Naples “Federico II” info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

We assessed how water rescue dogs, which were equally accustomed to respond to gestural and verbal requests, weighted gestural versus verbal information when asked by their owner to perform an action. Dogs were asked to perform four different actions ("sit", "lie down", "stay", "come") providing them with a single source of information (in Phase 1, gestural, and in Phase 2, verbal) or with incongruent information (in Phase 3, gestural and verbal commands referred to two different actions). In Phases 1 and 2, we recorded the frequency of correct responses as 0 or 1, whereas in Phase 3, we computed a 'preference index' (percentage of gestural commands followed over the total commands responded). Results showed that dogs followed gestures significantly better than words when these two types of information were used separately. Females were more likely to respond to gestural than verbal commands and males responded to verbal commands significantly better than females. In the incongruent condition, when gestures and words simultaneously indicated two different actions, the dogs overall preferred to execute the action required by the gesture rather than that required verbally, except when the verbal command "come" was paired with the gestural command "stay" with the owner moving away from the dog. Our data suggest that in dogs accustomed to respond to both gestural and verbal requests, gestures are more salient than words. However, dogs' responses appeared to be dependent also on the contextual situation: dogs' motivation to maintain proximity with an owner who was moving away could have led them to make the more 'convenient' choices between the two incongruent instructions.