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This is scientific Americans 62nd Science. I'm Jason Goldman. It's a classic television trope.

It's a classic television trope.

It's a classic television trope.

Timmy has fallen down a well. Lassie can't save him herself so she runs to find help.

Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show.

But the idea that a dog could seek help from a human

does have a solid basis in science.

In what's known as the Unsolvable Task Experiment, a dog first learns how to open a puzzle box with a tasty treat inside.

The puzzle is then secretly switched for another that's impossible to solve. After becoming frustrated, dogs shift their

attention away from the puzzle and onto a nearby human, then back to the puzzle. The dog attempts

to shift the human's attention to the puzzle as a request for help.

Human infants do the same thing.

Such efforts are called referential communication.

So if dogs behave this way, you might expect the same from their close relatives, wolves.

But when researchers tested wolves raised by humans, the animals just kept trying to solve the puzzle, never seeking help.

Since the dogs and wolves were all raised the same way and by the same people, domestication

must be responsible for the behavior. So researchers began studying other domesticated creatures.

Other animal species, like for example horses, goats, have been tested in these tests, but there were no direct

comparison with dogs.

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