WASHINGTON, United States - If you're looking for a word to describe your adorable pet pup, "selfish" might not top the list.
But a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE suggests Fido's reputation for being caring is all a ruse -- at least if you're a fellow dog.
A series of touchscreen experiments carried out by the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria found that wolves make for more selfless pack mates than dogs who were also raised in groups.
The study's authors say the findings suggest domestic dogs inherited their cooperative tendencies from their fierce wolf ancestors, rather than through their contact with human beings, a competing hypothesis.
Researchers trained the animals to use their snouts to press a "giving" symbol on a screen that delivered food to an adjacent enclosure, where a fellow animal may or may not be present.
Over multiple trials, wolves opted to deliver food to members of their own pack, knowing they would not get anything in return -- but lost interest if they were shown an unfamiliar wolf.
Dogs, on the other hand, showed no particular inclination to feed other dogs when no personal payoff was involved, regardless of whether they knew them or not.
"This study shows that domestication did not necessarily make dogs more prosocial," said lead author Rachel Dale.
"Rather, it seems that tolerance and generosity towards group members help to produce high levels of cooperation, as seen in wolves."
But don't write off your pooch just yet. The authors cautioned against applying the results of an experiment carried out on pack dogs to pet dogs, who have been found to have prosocial tendencies in past studies.
The researchers believe those behaviors could be the result of training or encouragement, and say more research is needed to determine what accounts for the differences.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
TAMPA, United States - Americans waste nearly 150,000 tons of food per day, amounting to about one pound (422 grams) per person, and fruits and vegetables are mostly what gets tossed, said a study Wednesday.
The amount of land used annually to grow food that ends up in the garbage in the United States is 30 million acres, or seven percent of total US cropland. Some 4.2 trillion gallons of irrigation water gets wasted, too, said the report in the journal PLOS ONE.
Fruits and vegetables made up 39 percent of total food waste, followed by dairy (17 percent), meat (14 percent) and grains (12 percent).
Items least likely to be thrown out included salty snacks, table oils, egg dishes, candy and soft drinks.
"Higher quality diets have greater amounts of fruits and vegetables, which are being wasted in greater quantities than other food," said co-author Meredith Niles, an assistant professor at the University of Vermont.
"Eating healthy is important, and brings many benefits, but as we pursue these diets, we must think much more consciously about food waste."
The report, based on government data and surveys about food waste from 2007 to 2014, found that the amount of wasted food equals about 30 percent of the average daily calories consumed for every American.
The costs to the environment and to farmers are "significant," it said.
"Food waste corresponded to harvests produced with the use of 780 million pounds of pesticide and 1.8 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer, annually."
Solutions may include teaching consumers how to better prepare and store fresh fruits and vegetables, revising "sell-by" dates, encouraging people to buy imperfect produce, and incorporating efforts to prevent food waste into government sustainability programs.
"Food waste is an issue that plays out at many different levels," said lead author Zach Conrad at the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in North Dakota.
"Looking at them holistically will become increasingly important to finding sustainable ways of meeting the needs of a growing world population."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
