By Susan Milius
Humans may be a bad influence on their best friends — at least when it comes to problem solving. Dogs that have lived around people lagged behind wolves in a task that wasn’t very tough: tugging a lid off a food container.
Only one of 20 dogs got the lid off a plastic storage box and gobbled the sausage treat inside, reports Monique Udell of Oregon State University in Corvallis. Yet eight of 10 wolves gnawed, pawed and ripped their way into the container.