It might seem like your new puppy is too scatterbrained to play fetch, but their instinct for the game might lie deep in their canine past. A new study published today in iScience found that wolf pups will pick up and retrieve balls thrown by humans with whom they are unfamiliar — indicating a willingness to play with people, a trait that could be older than domestic dogs themselves.
“Similarities [between dogs and wolves] can tell us something about which traits our forefathers likely selected upon to create the dog at least 15,000 years ago,” wrote Christina Hansen Wheat, a study co-author and zoologist at Stockholm University, in an email.
One of those traits could have been a wolf's inclination to respond to human instruction, “which will likely surprise dog owners as much as it surprised me,” she said.
As domestication gave dogs stunted snouts, black coats of fur and ...
