Wolves are highly social animals that live in packs. This pack structure requires cooperation and coordination between pack members for activities like hunting, raising pups, and defending territory. Given their social nature, wolves are sometimes described as having human-like emotions and behaviors like empathy. But what does the science say about whether wolves truly feel empathy?
What is empathy?
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings and emotions of others. It involves being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and experiencing events and emotions from their perspective. True empathy goes beyond simply recognizing emotions in others to actually feeling those emotions yourself.
There are two main components of empathy:
- Cognitive empathy – Also called perspective taking, this refers to mentally understanding another’s experience or point of view. It involves thinking about how someone else sees a situation.
- Affective empathy – Also called emotional empathy, this refers to actually experiencing and internalizing the feelings and emotions of others. It involves shared feelings between individuals.
Empathy is considered a higher-level social skill that requires some complex thinking and emotional processing. It is different than simple emotional contagion where one individual just copies the emotional state of another without any real understanding.
Do wolves have cognitive empathy?
There is some evidence that wolves have at least a basic form of cognitive empathy and ability to take the perspective of other wolves.
- Wolves respond to distress calls from other pack members and will return to assist wolves that are hurt or in danger. This suggests wolves can take the perspective of pack mates in trouble and understand when help is needed.
- During cooperative hunting, wolves appear able to anticipate the movements, behaviors, and role of other wolves in the pack. They can follow and interpret social cues indicating what their packmates will do next.
- In experiments, wolves have been observed intentionally cueing human partners to the location of hidden food and following pointing and gaze cues. This shows an understanding of visual perspective.
These sorts of behaviors indicate wolves likely have some capacity for mentally taking the point of view of other wolves and reading social cues to understand situations from their packmates’ perspective. This hints at a basic cognitive empathy in wolves.
Do wolves have affective empathy?
Whether wolves experience true emotional empathy and feeling the emotions of others is more debatable. There are some hints this may be possible:
- Wolves often mimic the behaviors and postures of other wolves, which could help promote internal shared feelings.
- When one wolf returns from a hunt, others often approach and lick the corners of its mouth, potentially to gain information about the food. This bonding may promote emotion sharing.
- In experiments, wolves respond to human cries for help even when not able to rescue the person. Their concern persists after the stimulus ends, suggesting a shared emotional state.
However, clear evidence of shared emotions and affective empathy between wolves remains limited. More research is needed on how wolves socially bond and coordinate to determine if true emotional empathy exists.
Do wolves comfort others in distress?
An important sign of empathy in many social animals is providing comfort or consolation to others in distress. Do wolves display this type of empathetic behavior?
Observations of consolation in wolves
Some observations of wolves suggest basic comforting and consoling behaviors:
- Wolves will often lick the faces and muzzles of babies and adults in the pack that are showing signs of distress or anxiety.
- Subordinate wolves that lose conflicts will be approached by other pack members who nuzzle and lick them around the face and ears.
- When a wolf returns after separation from the pack, other wolves communally lick and nuzzle them in greeting.
These affiliative behaviors may function as a way for wolves to console and alleviate distress in other pack members. The behaviors are similar across different stressful contexts like anxiety, fighting, and isolation.
Experimental findings
More systematic experiments have also tried to study consolation in captive wolves:
- One study found that wolves would reunite with and lick packmates that had recently experienced a fight after a 20 minute separation. This licking did not occur in the absence of a fight, suggesting it was consoling behavior.
- Another experiment found that wolves would lick and nuzzle their partners after the humans acted out scenarios of distress, such as crying. Control conditions ruled out simple bonding as the motivation.
These experiments lend more support to the idea that wolves will intentionally provide comfort to others in distress, not just for social bonding. This implies an ability to empathize.
Questions and limits
However, there are still questions around wolf consolation:
- The function of post-conflict affiliation in wolves is still debated. It may help restore valuable relationships rather than being pure consolation.
- More controlled experiments are needed to confirm that wolves are responding to distress specifically, and not just reacting to social cues generally.
- Stress-related behaviors may also be a form of emotional contagion rather than an intent to comfort.
So while existing research is promising, the motivation behind wolf comforting behaviors remains uncertain. More work is needed to determine if wolves truly intend to alleviate distress in others.
Do wolves cooperate and help each other?
Another marker of empathy is helping behaviors directed toward others in need. Do wolves ever work to actively help their fellow pack members?
Cooperative hunting and pup rearing
Wolves engage in highly coordinated activities that require cooperation:
- Wolf packs will work together to hunt large prey like deer or bison. Different wolves have distinct roles in the hunt that rely on teamwork.
- Pack members communally raise pups. Wolves will baby-sit, play with, and feed pups that are not their direct offspring.
- Defending territory requires the entire pack to work as a unit against intruders.
These cooperative behaviors likely require some ability to understand and coordinate with the needs and goals of other wolves. However, cooperation does not necessarily mean wolves have an intention to actively help each other. The activities may be a byproduct of shared goals or instincts.
Helping behaviors
Some limited evidence suggests directed helping between wolves:
- In one observation, a subordinate female wolf continued to bring food to the pups of the dominant female despite receiving aggression in response.
- Wolves have been observed adopting orphaned pups from other packs and caring for them along with their own offspring.
- Wolves will respond to distress calls from lost pack members and make efforts to locate and regroup with them.
These types of actions seem to go beyond just cooperation and indicate one wolf aiming to improve the welfare of another specifically. However, more systematic research is needed to confirm the motivation and drive behind such helping behaviors in wolves.
How do wolves show empathy-related traits?
If wolves do have some capacity for empathy, we would expect them to show certain behavioral and psychological traits related to perspective-taking, bonding, and emotion regulation. Do wolves demonstrate evidence of these traits?
Social bonding
Wolves form extremely tight social bonds with their family groups:
- Pack membership tends to last for life unless a wolf disperses to form its own pack.
- Wolves have elaborate greeting rituals involving licking and nibbling to reinforce bonds.
- Packs will communally care for young pups.
- Wolves become very stressed when isolated from their pack members.
This intense social bonding likely sets the stage for empathy by promoting closeness, emotion sharing, and familiarity with others’ traits and needs.
Perspective taking
As mentioned earlier, wolves do show some perspective taking abilities such as:
- Responding to the gaze and visual cues of other wolves.
- Interpreting the barks and body language of other pack members.
- Anticipating packmates’ behaviors during coordinated hunting.
Emotion regulation
Wolves engage in behaviors that may help regulate their own emotions and stress, which could assist in empathy:
- olf greeting rituals involve affiliative behaviors like licking, nibbling, and rubbing that appear to have a calming effect.
- Howling may release tension and communicate emotional states to other wolves.
- Allogrooming and rubbing against packmates may provide a soothing tactile stimulus.
By managing their own emotions, wolves may become better able to tune into the feelings of others.
Limitations of wolf empathy
While emerging evidence points to wolves having some components of empathy, their abilities are likely still limited compared to humans and other highly social mammals. Some restrictions on wolf empathy include:
Focus on the pack
Wolves show affiliative behaviors primarily toward other members of their own family pack. There is little evidence they empathize with wolves outside their immediate social circle or other species. Their empathy seems largely restricted to close relatives.
Less complex emotions
Wolf empathy probably evolved to help with coordination during hunting and pup rearing. As a result, it may be tuned for basic emotions related to hunger, fear, aggression, and bonding rather than more complex states. Their emotional palette is likely more restricted than humans’ or primates’.
Cognitive limitations
Compared to humans, wolves have smaller brains and less complex cognition. Without higher-level thinking abilities, translating an understanding of another’s state into helpful, empathetic actions may be difficult for wolves. Their empathy has biological constraints.
Domestication effects
Domestic dogs have been selectively bred from wolves for enhanced social skills. Pet dogs often clearly demonstrate empathy toward both canine and human companions. It is uncertain if captive wolves show stronger empathetic tendencies than wild wolves due to domestication effects. Comparisons between wild and domestic canids are needed.
Conclusions
In summary, the current evidence suggests:
- Wolves likely have a basic capacity for cognitive empathy and reading the perspective of other wolves.
- There are hints that wolves may experience emotional contagion and affective empathy as well.
- Consolation behaviors provide some evidence that wolves can sense and respond to distress in other pack members.
- Cooperation requires understanding of roles, but directed helping between wolves remains little studied.
- Strong social bonds facilitate components like emotion sharing that contribute to empathy.
However, due to limited research, many questions remain about the nuances of wolf empathy. Key next steps for understanding wolf empathy include:
- More detailed observations of post-conflict affiliation and helping behaviors.
- Experiments probing the specific motivations for consoling behaviors.
- Comparisons of wild vs. domestic wolves to assess effects of domestication.
- Studying wolves’ responses to complex emotional scenarios.
- Examining the empathy-related neurological structures in wolves.
With further research, we can better unravel the empathetic capacities of wolves compared to other mammalian species, including humans. This will shed light on the evolutionary origins of empathy and the select pressures that shaped this important social skill. Ultimately, empathy remains a complex behavior difficult to fully demonstrate in animals less communicative than humans. But initial findings suggest wolves are likely more empathetic than their predatory instincts might suggest.