We know about the connection between dogs and their human caretakers. It is not clear when that bond emerged. Was it gradually during domestication? Or is it a trait that wolves, their ancestors, already had? Apparently, it is the latter. So says one study: wolves forge bonds with humans.
The University of Stockholm (Sweden) carried it out. It concluded that bonding with people is not unique to dogs. Young wolves also show this.

Family bonds
Researchers tested twelve 23-week-old dogs and ten 23-week-old wolves in an experiment known as the ‘Strange Situation’. They measured the stress of confronting an unfamiliar person or environment. This causes the subject to seek proximity to its handler. The more it is sought, the greater the attachment.
Details are in the journal ‘Ecology and Evolution’.The animals were reared by the researchers from the time they were ten days old. It was analyzed whether they showed more affection with familiar people than strangers.
“That’s exactly what we saw,” says the Christina Hansen Wheat. She is a professor of ethology and head of the study. “The wolves, like the dogs, preferred the familiar person over the stranger. The dogs were not particularly affected by the test situation, but the wolves were. They paced around the room until the familiar person arrived. It acted as a social stress buffer for the wolves,” he explains.

Selective advantage
This contradicts an old hypothesis. This argued that only the domestication of dogs allowed the bond to form. But the similarities between dogs and wolves may tell us something about the origin of the behavior we see in our pets. It may surprise us that wolves forge bonds with humans. But, in retrospect, it also makes sense. “Wolves that showed attachment to humans may have had a selective advantage in the early stages of dog domestication,” he suggests.