Wolves as pets and working animals
Some wildlife centers housing captive wolves prohibit handlers from entering wolf enclosures if they happen to have a cold or other vulnerability which the wolves can detect. Captive wolves are generally shy and avoid eye contact with humans other than their owner, as well as not listening to any commands made by any other humans. They usually vacate rooms or hide when a new person enters the establishment. Even seemingly friendly wolves need to be treated with caution, as captive wolves tend to view and treat people as other wolves, and will thus bite or dominate people in the same situation in which they would other wolves. Ordinary pet food is inadequate, as an adult wolf needs 1–2.5 kg (2–5 lbs) of meat daily along with bones, skin and fur to meet its nutritional requirements. Wolves may defend their food against people, and react violently to people trying to remove it. The exercise needs of a wolf exceed the average dog's demand. Because of this, captive wolves typically do not cope well in urban areas. Due to their talent at observational learning, adult captive wolves can quickly work out how to escape confinement, and require constant reinforcement by caretakers or owners, which makes raising wolves difficult for people who raise their pets in an even, rather than subordinate, environment.
Inequity aversion in animals
Wolves ("Canis lupus") are highly social animals that cooperate in hunting, breeding and defending their territories. Essler, Marshall-Pescini, and Range set up an experiment with nine wolves and ten pack-living dogs to investigate if domestication was the reason dogs show a primitive form of inequity aversion.
The animals had to press a buzzer to receive a reward, which was either equal or inferior to the reward of a partner performing the same action in an adjacent enclosure.
The wolves stopped pressing the buzzer once they observed their partner got a better reward for the same action.
In the conditions without receiving a reward, wolves completed fewer tasks when there was a partner who did get rewarded than when there was no partner at all. Taking the social hierarchy into account, dominant wolves reacted strongly to a subordinate being rewarded when they were not. Given that the results for pack-living dogs were very similar, the researchers concluded that the common ancestor of wolves and dogs likely already was inequity averse, and that domestication is not a factor for this behavior in dogs.