A new study published in the journal "Animal Behavior" shows that in a "natural helping" scenario where no explicit request for help is required, the spontaneous prosocial behavior displayed by domestic dogs is more similar to that of human children aged 16 to 24 months, while domestic cats are significantly different. The research team selected three groups of subjects: young children between 16 and 24 months old, companion dogs without special training, and companion cats living in similar human family environments. There are significant differences in the ecological, evolutionary and developmental backgrounds of the three, but they all have close daily contact with humans.
In the experiment, the experimenter secretly hid an object in the presence of the subject, and then asked a familiar caregiver (parent or pet owner) to find the object without directly requesting the subject to examine whether the subject would spontaneously participate in "helping." The study recorded subjects' gaze direction, approach, and manipulation of objects, and distinguished behaviors that might simply be explained by "stimulus enhancement" (such as approaches and touches driven by curiosity or interest) from "pointing" or "retrieval" behaviors that are more likely to reflect prosocial tendencies.
The results showed that there were no significant differences between the three groups of toddlers, dogs, and cats in the level of attention paid to the caregiver and the target object, and all three species paid equal attention to the problem situation. However, in terms of key object-related behaviors, young children and dogs show a high degree of consistency: not only will they approach and operate hidden objects, but they will also participate in problem-solving by "instructing" or "retrieving". The behavioral pattern was interpreted by researchers as a spontaneous prosocial response with interpersonal significance. In contrast, cats mainly exhibit object-related behaviors, but more often under conditions consistent with their own interests, and the so-called "indicative" gaze alternation behaviors (such as gazing back and forth between the caregiver and the hiding place) are significantly less likely to occur.
In order to eliminate the interfering factor of "whether there is motivation to participate", the study also designed a "motivation test": each subject's favorite food or toy was hidden in the same way as the test, and their performance in a situation related to their own direct interests was tested. In this type of experiment, the differences in related behaviors between the three species disappeared, showing that cats will also actively participate in this task situation if it is beneficial to themselves, thus supporting the explanation that "cats are not unable to participate, but are not inclined to take the initiative to help others when they need it."
Based on this, the research team pointed out that the simple domestication process and close coexistence with humans are not enough to automatically induce spontaneous prosocial tendencies similar to humans. The reason why dogs behave more like human children in such helping situations may be related to the highly social and cooperative nature of their ancestors. It is also closely related to the long-term selection pressure for cooperation and the ability to interact with humans during the domestication process of dogs. These factors jointly shape dogs' special cooperative abilities in cross-species interactions, making them more likely to show spontaneous helping behaviors toward humans without explicit instructions, while cats only participate in similar situations when it is in their own interests.