phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:5639 DOI 10.34876/8cs2-8576 Cognitive processes underlying problem solving abilities in dogs and wolves PhD thesis - University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna – 2026 The full text is only available to university members. Please log in! Previous experiments have shown that wolves usually outperform dogs in problem solving tasks. However, it is unknown whether this is due to differences in cognitive abilities (e.g., wolves being more adept in learning and inference) or due to other factors that may influence how the animals engage with the task at hand (e.g., neophilia, neophobia, and persistence). The aim of this thesis was to assess just that, to tease apart the mechanisms behind the observed differences in problem solving. To achieve this, a series of complementary experiments were planned, addressing 1) dogs’ and wolves’ innovative problem solving skills (their ability to adapt their behavior to deal with novel problems and opportunities), 2) the differences in wolf and dog behavior towards novel objects (a test of neophilia), 3) wolves’ and dogs’ ability to learn new, arbitrary associations (the first test of acquisition of learning set comparing these two species), and 4) these animals’ ability of performing inferential reasoning, what has been considered a hallmark of higher cognitive skills. A fifth study was also performed in starlings in order to develop a new technique to measure inferential reasoning in animals after the previous study. Puzzlingly, results in all these studies have shown few differences between wolves and dogs and, when present, dogs seem to slightly outperform their wild-living closest relatives. Implications on the role of evolution, experience, individual variability, and the effect of the paradigms used on the results observed —as well as some potential novel research avenues— are discussed. eng 2026-10-23T14:19:21.999Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Rivas Blanco;Dániel; FN:Dániel Rivas Blanco END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0 application/pdf 16740982 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:5639 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:5639/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline