Why Wolves Are Forever Wild, But Dogs Can Be Tamed

"Why wolves are forever wild, but dogs can be tamed"

 

 

 

            In the article "Why wolves are forever wild, but dogs can be tamed" by evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she shares her discoveries on the real story behind why dogs and wolf pups are each socially unique. To distinguish the differences on how dogs and wolf pups grow up in their own ways, Lord studied the responses of seven wolf pups and 43 dogs to both new and recognizable smells, sounds and visual stimuli. She established that they widen their senses at the same time. But during her study, she also exposed new information about how the two subspecies of Canis lupus experience their environment through a four-week developmental window called the crucial period of socialization, and the relatively new facts drastically change the perceptive wolf and dog development. Throughout Lord’s studies, she determined that both dogs and wolf pups enlarge the sense of smell at age two weeks, hearing at age four weeks and vision by age six weeks typically. However, dogs and wolf pups penetrate the crucial period of socialization at diverse stages. Dogs begin the period at four weeks, while wolves begin at two weeks. Because wolf pups begin their crucial period of socialization at two weeks, unlike dogs, they have not yet gained any senses because they are blind and deaf until the age of four weeks. This creates a long troubling fear among wolf pups. Dogs often are better with other animals and other humans because they have developed their three senses by the time they begin their social stage in life. In the article "Why wolves are forever wild, but dogs can be tamed" by evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she opens up her triumphs on the valid data showing why dogs and wolf pups are each socially unique.

 Nature of Science Themes:

• Importance of repeatability: Kathryn Lord repeated the same physical senses tests for seven wolf pups and 43 dog pups to get accurate results for finding the amount of time it took each to gain their physical senses.
• Role of motivation and curiosity: Biologist Kathryn Lord conducted this experiment with wolf pups and dog pups because of her longing curiosity of why wolves and dogs act differently. She had the motivation to conduct this experiment because she knew that many people also had the same curious thoughts.
• Role of Chance: Although scientist Kathryn Lord used seven wolf pups and 43 dog pups to gather evidence, she took the chance of possibly having some wolf pups or dog pups already having physical senses problems, or different genetics.
 

 Readers: Do you think where wolf pups and dog pups originated makes a difference in the amount of social opportunity they got at the beginning of time?

 

 

            I chose to read this article and discuss it because I was very interested to read about the differences between wolves and dogs. I have always had an interest in these two animals and I was interested in seeing how Kathryn Lord went about creating the experiment and collecting the data. I have always had a growing curiosity about why dogs are more tamable than wolves.

 

 

Link: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2013/01/18/why_wolves_are_forever_wild_but_dogs_can_be_tamed.html

 

Katie Vollmer

Hour 1