A score of three indicated that the animal had been able to complete at least one trial in a three rope test, while a score of two denoted the animal’s success in completing at least one trial in a two rope test such as test number two and test number three. An animal that received a score of one would indicate that the animal had been able to complete test number one with the singular rope, but that they had been unable to succeed in any of the other tests. An animal that was either untrainable or had no correct test trials in the singular rope test such as test number one. The adult wolves had been assigned a species score of one and ended up receiving a success score of three. The dogs were assigned a species score of three, and mainly received success scores of one and two. The juvenile wolves were most successful in the two rope tests, but a third of the wolves were able to receive a score of three, which indicates that they may be capable of succeeding in three rope tests in the future. When looking at these success scores and comparing the scores that they achieved as a species it was shown that the animals species was correlated with their success. This can be seen in the lower success scores of the dogs, which came about due to the majority of the dogs being unable to generalize …show more content…
Though netenous behavioral characteristics were observed in the dogs of this study due to the similarity of their responses to that of the juvenile wolves it was also noted that there are many non-neotenous characteristics that dogs display that allow them to be able to perform on par with or even succeed the adult wolves. These non-neotenous characters both physical and behavioral are likely to have been a result of artificial selection by humans in order to create or enhance the traits which characterize dog breeds. This conscious goal orientated artificial selection for various phenotypes leads to the wide diversity in dog breeds (Coppinger, R., J. Glendinning, E. Torop, C. Matthay, M. Sutherland, and C. Smith, 2010). The goal orientated nature of artificial selection may lead to a reduction in the animal’s ability for survival because unlike natural selection humans are selecting the traits which may not aid in the animal’s survival as the breeder decides what animals may breed and with whom they will breed rather than nature (Price, Edward O, 2002). This is very different from the natural selection pressures that wolves are exposed. Natural selection is goal orientated for taking full advantage of their individual adaptability for ensuring the animals survival and ability to reproduce. It is due to this human influence and interaction that the dogs have developed and