  Canids display a vast diversity of social organizations, from solitary-living
to pairs to packs. Domestic dogs have descended from pack-living gray wolf-like
ancestors. Unlike their group living ancestors, free-ranging dogs are
facultatively social, preferring to forage solitarily. They are scavengers by
nature, mostly dependent on human garbage and generosity for their sustenance.
Free-ranging dogs are highly territorial, often defending their territories
using vocalizations. Vocal communication plays a critical role between inter
and intraspecies and group interaction and maintaining their social dynamics.
Barking is the most common among the different types of vocalizations of dogs.
Dogs have a broad hearing range and can respond to sounds over long distances.
Domestic dogs have been shown to have the ability to distinguish between
barking in different contexts. Since free-ranging dogs regularly engage in
various kinds of interactions with each other, it is interesting to know
whether they are capable of distinguishing between vocalizations of their own
and other groups. In this study, a playback experiment was used to test if dogs
can distinguish between barking of their own group member from a non-group
member. Though dogs respond to barking from other groups in territorial
exchanges, they did not respond differently to the self and other group barking
in the playback experiments. This suggests a role of context in the
interactions between dogs and opens up possibilities for future studies on the
comparison of the responses of dogs in playback experiments with their natural
behavior through long-term observations.
