Some Behavioral Features Required for the Selection of Detection Dogs
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Some Behavioral Features Required for the Selection of Detection Dogs Yu. V. Ganitskayaa, N. Yu. Feoktistovaa, *, D. D. Vasukova, and A. V. Surova a
Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 119071 Russia *e-mail: [email protected] Received May 23, 2019; revised December 18, 2019; accepted January 31, 2020
Abstract—Relationships between the detection time of the target objects (drugs) and the individual behavioral characteristics of dogs have been studied. The following parameters of the individual behavior of the dogs were recorded: Sociability, Activity, Play, Reactions to the unexpected appearance of an unfamiliar object, and Noise. It has been noted that the dogs with high rates of sociability and playing and average rates of activity turned out to be the most successful in the searching. It has been found that in different breeds, the time of drug detection depends on their behavioral parameters, has own specifics, and is not gender-related. Various tests for some dog breeds for selection of the most promising detecting individuals have been recommended. DOI: 10.1134/S1062359020050039
INTRODUCTION Domestic dogs Canis lupus familiaris have lived with humans for about 30000 years (Thalmann, 2013). Previously, they were used mainly for guard duties, hunting, and herding livestock. During domestication, a huge number of breeds has been developed for various purposes. Nowadays, working dogs are used by humans to protect property, to fight crime, to search for and rescue victims in emergency situations, to identify various diseases in medicine, to help people with disabilities (Pfaffenberger, 1976), etc. Dogs are also widely used to detect various chemicals (drugs, explosives, gases, etc.). Recently, due to an increased threat of terrorism, the training of detecting dogs has received considerable attention, and individual characteristics play an important role in selection. Often the behavioral aspects of a dog are more significant for search work than its sensory or morphological traits (Slabbert and Odendaal, 1999; Svartberg, 2005). The ability to predict the working potential of an adult dog by the results of testing puppies has been shown previously (Goddard and Beilharz, 1986; Hsu and Serpell, 2003; Jones and Gosling, 2005). However, this issue is still debatable. Some researchers consider the results of testing adult dogs as most reliable (Netto and Planta, 1997), while others believe that it is more correct to test puppies from the age of eight weeks (Beaudet et al., 1994; Slabbert and Odendaal, 1999). It is important to choose adequate behavioral criteria for the description of the individual characteristics of dogs (Tomkins et al., 2011). Reactivity, fearfulness,
activity, sociability, responsiveness to training, submissiveness, and aggression are most often used as such traits (Jones and Gosling, 2005). The behavior of companion dogs is evaluated by three to five parameters (activity, submissiveness, sociability, etc.), which allows predicting their in
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