猪比狗，更像狼｜科学60秒
有一个经典的电视桥段：蒂米（Timmy）掉入井里了！莱西（Lassie）单凭自己的力量无法救出他，所以她跑去找人寻求帮助。实际上，在整部电视剧（译者注：这里指1954年首播的美国电视剧《灵犬莱西》）里，蒂米从未跌落井中，但是，狗会向人类寻求帮助这一点在科学界确实有据可循。
在所谓的“无法解决的任务”（unsolvable task）实验中，研究人员让狗先学会如何打开一个装有美味食物的机关盒子，然后秘密地将其换成另一个不可能解开的机关盒。尝试无果后，狗狗会将注意力从机关转移到附近的人类身上，然后又回到机关盒处。狗狗试图让人类也注意到机关盒，以此寻求帮助。人类婴儿也会做同样的事，这种做法被称为“参照性交流”（referential communication）。
如果狗有这种行为，你可能会觉得它的近亲狼也有同样的行为。但是当研究人员对人类饲养的狼进行测试时，它们只会一直努力想要解开机关，从不会寻求帮助。由于实验中的狗和狼都是由相同的人以相同的方式饲养的，这种行为差异一定与驯化有关，于是研究人员开始研究其他的驯化动物。
“其他动物物种，例如马和山羊，也完成了这项测试，但它们和狗并没有可比性。”匈牙利厄特沃什·罗兰大学（Eötvös Loránd University）的动物行为学家保拉·佩雷斯·弗拉加（Paula Pérez Fraga）说道。
相比狗，宠物猫的反应反而更像狼。猫是一种驯化动物，但它们不像狗和狼那样是群居动物。不过，猪是群居动物。
“当猪生活在野外时，它们会群居生活，甚至野猪也是如此。它们须要与同伴交流才能生活。”
这就是为什么研究人员决定将宠物狗与宠物猪进行对比。虽然猪具备进行参照性交流的能力，但它们……[查看全文]
Why Pet Pigs Are More like Wolves Than Dogs
It's a classic television trope: Timmy has fallen down a well! Lassie can't save him herself, so she runs to find help. Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show. But the idea that a dog could seek help from a human does have a solid basis in science.
In what's known as the "unsolvable task" experiment, a dog first learns how to open a puzzle box with a tasty treat inside. The puzzle is then secretly switched for another that's impossible to solve. After becoming frustrated, dogs shift their attention away from the puzzle and onto a nearby human and then back to the puzzle. The dog attempts to shift the human's attention to the puzzle as a request for help. Human infants do the same thing. Such efforts are called "referential communication."
So if dogs behave this way, you might expect the same from their close relatives: wolves. But when researchers tested wolves raised by humans, the animals just kept trying to solve the puzzle, never seeking help. Since the dogs and wolves were all raised the same way and by the same people, domestication must be responsible for the behavior. So researchers began studying other domesticated creatures.
"Other animal species—for example, horses, goats—have been tested in this test. But there were no direct comparisons with dogs."
Paula Pérez Fraga, an ethologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.
Pet cats respond more like wolves than like dogs. Cats are domesticated, but they are not social like dogs and wolves. Pigs, however, are social.
"When pigs live in the wild—or even wild boars—these animals live in groups. They need to communicate with their conspecifics to be able to live."
Which is why the researchers decided to compare pet dogs with pet pigs. While the pigs revealed that they were capable of referential communication, they...[full transcript]
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