Explaining dog wolf differences in utilizing human pointing gestures: selection for synergistic shifts in the development of some social skills.

Background: The comparison of human related communication skills of socialized canids may help to understand the evolution and the epigenesis of gesture comprehension in humans. To reconcile previously contradicting views on the origin of dogs' outstanding performance in utilizing human gestures, we suggest that dog-wolf differences should be studied in a more complex way.

Methodology/principal Findings: We present data both on the performance and the behaviour of dogs and wolves of different ages in a two-way object choice test.

Precise endogenous control of involvement of right and left visual structures in assessment by zebrafish.

Birds and fish use monocular viewing to bring to bear appropriate lateralised specialisations. In larval zebrafish, persistent left eye (LE) viewing of their own reflection is interrupted by a series of brief 'events', in which the right eye has equal use. These recur with precise 160 s periodicity, with the first beginning after 40s, and allow right and left mechanisms to assess the reflection.

Species-specific differences and similarities in the behavior of hand-raised dog and wolf pups in social situations with humans.

In order to reveal early species-specific differences, we observed the behavior of dog puppies (n = 11) and wolf pups (n = 13) hand raised and intensively socialized in an identical way. The pups were studied in two object-preference tests at age 3, 4, and 5 weeks. After a short isolation, we observed the subjects' behavior in the presence of a pair of objects, one was always the subject's human foster parent (caregiver) and the other was varied; nursing bottle (3 weeks), unfamiliar adult dog (3 and 5 weeks), unfamiliar experimenter (4 and 5 weeks), and familiar conspecific age mate (4 weeks).