In a much publicized paper in 2003, Adam Miklosi, now director of the Family Dog Project, at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, described work in which dogs and wolves who were raised by humans learned to open a container to get food. Then they were presented with the same container, modified so that it could not be opened. Wolves persisted, trying to solve the unsolvable problem, while dogs looked back at nearby humans.

At first glance it might seem to a dog lover that the dogs were brilliant, saying, in essence, “Can I get some help here? You closed it; you open it.” But Dr. Miklosi didn’t say that. He concluded that dogs have a genetic predisposition to look at humans, which could have been the basis for the intense but often imperfect communication that dogs and people engage in.

Dr. Udell decided to turn the experiment around and give the wolves and dogs a task that they could solve, if they tried. She also put a food treat in a container. The difference, she said, was that “the animals could get it open — they just had to exert themselves.”

The wolves persisted and solved it. The dogs, in both groups, quickly looked back at the humans.

She interprets her results as showing that the findings of the earlier experiment are “not evidence of advanced cognitive ability,” and that the different approaches to problem solving are not related to cognitive ability at all.