Choices by Trial for Owner Average accuracy and use of win-stay strategy across various owner trials.

<p>Dashed line represents chance level for correct choices. Note that in the 2^nd trial the target was never positioned to the same place as it was in the 1^st. From the 3^rd trial onward a win-stay choice (choosing the position the owner was located in the previous trial) could be either correct or incorrect.</p

Testing Room.

<p>Setup of the testing room with the three conditions (0m, 1m, 3m distances), and three positions (A, B, C). The experimenter (E) and the dog entered the room through the side door during the warm up trials, and through the main door (“Enter”) during the test trials. E and dog stood in the waiting area for 15s at the start of each trial.</p

Learning Across Owner Trials.

<p>Average number of correct choices in the two halves of the owner trials. **P = 0.01; ## P<0.01. Dashed line represents chance level (2.5 out of 5).</p

Finding Owner at Three Distances.

<p>Median value of choices in each condition that were either successful (correct), or identical to the owner’s position during the previous trial (win-stay). Chance level for success (1 correct out of 3) is 33.3%; *** P<0.001, * P<0.05. Chance level for win-stay is 0.899; ## P<0.01.</p

A Test of Canine Olfactory Capacity: Comparing Various Dog Breeds and Wolves in a Natural Detection Task

<div><p>Many dog breeds are bred specifically for increased performance in scent-based tasks. Whether dogs bred for this purpose have higher olfactory capacities than other dogs, or even wolves with whom they share a common ancestor, has not yet been studied. Indeed, there is no standard test for assessing canine olfactory ability. This study aimed to create a simple procedure that requires no pre-training and to use it to measure differences in olfactory capacity across four groups of canines: (1) dog breeds that have been selected for their scenting ability; (2) dog breeds that have been bred for other purposes; (3) dog breeds with exaggerated short-nosed features; and (4) hand-reared grey wolves. The procedure involved baiting a container with raw turkey meat and placing it under one of four identical ceramic pots. Subjects were led along the row of pots and were tasked with determining by olfaction alone which of them contained the bait. There were five levels of increasing difficulty determined by the number of holes on the container’s lid. A subsample of both dogs and wolves was retested to assess reliability. The results showed that breeds selected for scent work were better than both short-nosed and non-scent breeds. In the most difficult level, wolves and scenting breeds performed better than chance, while non-scenting and short-nosed breeds did not. In the retested samples wolves improved their success; however, dogs showed no change in their performances indicating that a single test may be reliable enough to assess their capacity. Overall, we revealed measurable differences between dog breeds in their olfactory abilities and suggest that the Natural Detection Task is a good foundation for developing an efficient way of quantifying them.</p></div

The test setup.

<p>One of the containers placed under the four upside down ceramic pots, placed at approximately one-meter intervals, is baited with 30–32 grams of raw meat. The owner is leading a wolf along the pots.</p

Levels of difficulty.

<p>The different types of lids used for baiting in the five levels of difficulty. Each hole was 1 cm in diameter.</p

Mean (SE) performance of wolves in the Natural Detection Task.

<p>In addition to the average performance of the wolf group as a whole, the performance of the retested animals in Test 1 and Test 2 is shown across the five levels.</p