At a recent zoo trip, the wolf specialist tossed food to the animals as part of his speech about them. He mentioned that they always have to show the animals the bowl is empty once they’re done feeding. Why is this?
I would assume the obvious, that they want the wolves to know that the bowl is empty?
I’ve experienced the same thing with dogs. They get excited by the presence of food and they don’t calm down until they can see that the food is gone.
It’s pretty simple. Wolves are smart. They have evolved to gorge themselves because they never know when they’ll have their next meal. They’ll think there’s more food in the bowl if they don’t see that it’s empty. If they don’t see that they’ll be fixated on getting to that bowl to get the rest of the food instead of going back to lying around and appearing harmless to the zoo patrons. And if the wolves think they’ve been shorted on the available food source they’ll be more aggressive the next time the keeper comes around with bowl. This is pretty much how humans in captivity would react. The humans may better grasp the concept of being fed regular amounts on a schedule, while the wolves naturally consider that they have to eat all they can every time food is available, but if the humans feel they aren’t being fed enough and there’s more available they’ll react much like the wolves and the keepers will try to avoid problems in the same way. I don’t know any details of prison cafeterias but I’m sure once the prisoners are fed the guards aren’t going to keep tables of available food in view of the prisoners.
And here I thought it was yet another of those left wing inspired 1970’s era nonsense agreements, between the zoo keepers and the Wolves Union.
live and learn.
its not just so spectators don’t see a crazy animal…
Well it makes it simpler for the handler to communicate… its kind of a communication saying “at ease”.
Its important because the animal may do something to hurt itself trying to get to the food.
It might also remain in a hunting,eat,feasting mode and do an injury to other animals… rather then returning to a more social demeanor.
And as long as there is food, a dog will continue to eat. There is no off switch. They will eat until they puke and then eat the puke.
Not true, well, not always.
We had a dog that we would fill his bowl in the AM and he would eat when hungry. The food usually lasted most of the day.
I feel kind of stupid because there’s something I must be missing here. Can’t the wolf just see that the bowl is empty? Why must he be shown what is so obvious?
If a human is holding a bowl at typical human-holding-things height, it’s going to be above eye level for a wolf. And given an upright bowl at above eye level, you can’t see what’s in it (or not in it).
I imagine they are hand fed a pile of meat from a container and the zookeeper shows them the empty container at the conclusion.
A lot of dog keepers don’t believe in leaving food around for their dogs. They are fed on a schedule and aren’t left stuff to pick at.
ETA: here is a video Berlin zoo
So the wolves will be mentally satisfied.
And it doesn’t have to come out as puke either. The rule for most dogs seems to be that if a meal was good enough to eat once, it’s good enough to eat twice.
It’s a signal. When the bowl’s on the ground, he’s focused on eating. Lifting the bowl up and showing him it’s empty forms a mental association in his mind between the bowl being picked up and knowing feeding time is done.
Humans lie …
Sorry, one detail I forgot to mention is that the keeper holds a dish of food (balls of ground meat) in one hand and tosses the balls into the enclosure, usually landed close enough to where each wolf was standing for them to just lean forward and snap it up.
Also, these wolves (red wolves) are treated such that they could possibly be released into the wild (unlikely for these specific individuals as they’d already been graded poor candidates for survival in the wild).
Are wolves really smart enough to realize food comes from the dish in the keepers hand and not just the keeper himself? Or is it more that showing an empty dish is just a convenient hand signal for “feeding time is over”?
Dogs are certainly smart enough to see that food comes out of a container, and the only differences between dogs and wolves, intelligence-wise, are all in the wolf’s favor.
Not true at all. We had two standard poodles (three actually, but I’m only talking about lour last two). We’d leave a bowl of kibble full, and they’d eat when hungry. In fact one of them never really ate too much at once. If we were gardening outside, we’d leave a bowl nearby. Sarah would take a bite or two, run around and take another bite, repeat for fifteen minutes or so.
Well it’s true at least for my dog then. 
Eating sparingly like that is a sign of dominance. It’s a way of saying “I know that nobody would dare to take away my food”.