研究人员惊讶地发现，小狼崽会叼东西

研究人员惊讶地发现，小狼崽会叼东西

Some dogs just love to play fetch. When you have the ball, they need you to throw it immediately so they can catch it.

有些狗就是喜欢玩接球游戏。当你拿到球的时候，它们需要你马上扔出去，这样它们才能接住球。

But it's not just dogs that love this game. Researchers recently found that wolf puppies will also chase and return a ball, picking up on human cues on how to play fetch. Their findings were published in the journal iScience.

但不仅仅是狗喜欢这项运动。研究人员最近发现，小狼崽也会追逐并回球，它们会根据人类的线索来玩接球游戏。他们的发现发表在《iScience》杂志上。

"When I saw the first wolf puppy retrieving the ball I literally got goose bumps," Christina Hansen Wheat of Stockholm University, Sweden, said in a statement. "It was so unexpected, and I immediately knew that this meant that if variation in human-directed play behavior exists in wolves, this behavior could have been a potential target for early selective pressures exerted during dog domestication."

瑞典斯德哥尔摩大学的克里斯蒂娜·汉森·惠特在一份声明中说:“当我看到第一只狼崽捡球时，我真的起了鸡皮疙瘩。这太出乎意料了，我立刻意识到，这意味着，如果狼中存在以人为本的游戏行为的变异，那么这种行为可能会成为狗驯化过程中施加的早期选择性压力的潜在目标。”

Hansen Wheat and her team stumbled upon the discovery during their research studying the differences between dogs and wolves to see how domestication impacts behavior. As part of their research, they raise litters of wolf and dog puppies and put them through various behavioral tests that are often used by breeders to see how puppies act in social situations, Hansen Wheat tells NPR.

汉森·惠特和她的团队在研究狗和狼的区别时偶然有了这个发现，他们想知道驯化是如何影响行为的。汉森·惠特告诉美国国家公共电台(NPR)，作为研究的一部分，他们饲养了一窝狼和狗的幼犬，并让它们接受各种行为测试，这些测试通常被饲养员用来观察幼犬在社交场合的表现。

The role of domestication

驯化的作用

This wolf puppy named Flea was one of a litter that showed little interest in chasing a ball. (Photo: Christina Hansen Wheat)

During one of those tests, a person who had never been around the wolf puppies throws a tennis ball and encourages the puppies to go get it and bring it back.

在其中一次测试中，一个从未接触过小狼崽的人扔出一个网球，鼓励小狼崽去捡回来。

In tests with two earlier litters, the wolf puppies showed no interest in the balls, much less fetching them. But this time around, three of the 8-week-old wolf puppies were intrigued by the ball and returned it to strangers with a little encouragement.

在对两窝较早出生的幼犬进行的测试中，小狼崽对球没有兴趣，更不用说去取球了。但这一次，3只8周大的小狼崽对这个球很感兴趣，给了陌生人一点鼓励。

The discovery is surprising because researchers hypothesized that the abilities to pick up on cues given by people — like those they need to understand to play fetch — came about in dogs due to 15,000 years of domestication.

这一发现令人惊讶，因为研究人员推测，狗狗之所以能够识别人类给出的线索——比如它们需要理解的玩取物游戏的线索——是因为15000年来人类对狗的驯化。

Seeing the behavior in wolf puppies can give us information about where the fetch behavior in dogs comes from, Hansen Wheat says. While it was surprising to see wolf puppies playing and connecting with people that way, she says it makes sense.

汉森·惠特说，观察狼崽的行为可以让我们了解狗的取物行为从何而来。虽然看到小狼崽以这种方式玩耍和与人交流令人惊讶，但她说这是有道理的。

"Wolf puppies showing human-directed behavior could have had a selective advantage in early stages of dog domestication," she says.

她说:“在狗的驯化早期阶段，狼幼犬表现出的人为行为可能具有选择性优势。”