Scientists at the Wolf Science Center in Austria are having wolves run on a giant treadmill in order to better understand their behavior. The treadmill is 7 feet wide and 30 feet long, and it has been used since 2011.
In order to make the wolves comfortable with the treadmill, researchers started the wolves on extremely low speeds before letting them work their way up to faster paces.
It was a slow process of making sure that the wolves were comfortable with the treadmill, but now the wolves are running on the treadmill at full speeds.
Dogs have also been running on the treadmill as a way to better understand their interactions and relationships with humans.
The treadmill project was led by University of Vienna Professor Kurt Kotrschal.
Professor Kotrschal often has multiple wolves running on the treadmill at once in order to see how they interact with each other.
Kotrschal and his team are trying to learn how running affects the willingness of the wolves to share food and how well wolves are willing to work together with certain members of their pack.
The researchers eventually want to use the treadmill to study the heart rates of the wolves. They will also be able to better understand how the process of domestication has impacted the evolution of dogs over time.
In the near future, they hope to have humans and dogs running on the treadmill at the same time in order to learn more about the human and dog relationship.
The researchers say that forcing the animals to run in order to achieve their goals puts the wolves into a more natural scenario.
In the wild, wolves have to run in order to catch their prey. Having them run on a treadmill is a good simulation for this, and it allows scientists to study the wolves in a better simulated natural environment.
The scientists say that this is an improvement over traditional animal studies, in which the animals were not required to run in order to achieve their goals.
And while the scientists are able to study the wolves in more natural simulations, the giant treadmill is also a novel concept in itself.
Stay Connected
