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.
