Go look at a any dog.
Now, go look at a wolf.
Dogs have the intellect of a 4–5 year old child at the very best.
Wolves are intelligent enough to figure out the hunting laws by counting the number of rounds fired and are able to discern different calibers by their report, sometimes from miles.
Iirc there was a video series about scientists trying to domesticate wolves and failing horribly. They failed horribly because the wolves quickly realized that they didn’t need the humans. That start as cubs, and they look like adorable puppies.
Watching the video you can see their thought progression:
Human equals food
Human doesn’t equal food, just has food
Human has food that comes from this place
We don’t need human because we can just go get food from place
Human locks place with food
We can break into place with food
Right about here is where the scientists give up
Things is, you can see wolves exhibiting very “dog” behavior. There’s plenty of videos of them playing with balls, or in snow, etc. This isn’t dog behavior, it’s just watered down lupine behavior. What humans have done here is dumbed down wolves enough that they think they need humans. While humans and dogs have an interesting symbiotic relationship, it stems from the fact that dogs are the only apex predator that has been domesticated. We had to breed out the size and the smarts. It’s pretty clear studying wolf behavior that they’re highly intelligent, and they can and do utilize tactics in their hunting.
If I recall correctly, laws had to be changed for hunting in some states because wolves quickly learned that hunters could only have a certain number of rounds in their weapon. Once these were expended, the wolves would swoop in and grab whatever the hunter was going after. I remember once in Oklahoma I was on a friend’s property and I saw a single wolf. I pointed it out and he calmly and casually continued doing what he was doing. When I asked if he was concerned, he said it wasn’t the one that you saw you needed to be concerned with, it was the five, six, or ten you didn’t see that were the ones to be worried about.
When you put a wolf next to a dog, you quickly realize there’s a huge difference. Even when you compare them to a “wolf-looking” dog. Dogs also keep their tails up, and all wolves I’ve ever seen keep their tails down. Wolves eyes are also different colors, mostly yellow or orange. Dogs have also evolved the muscles around the eyes to be more expressive. Then there’s the overall size. Wolves can be absolutely MASSIVE compared to dogs, with some clocking in at 200lbs. With the size increase comes the brain size increase. There’s plenty of documentation of wolves being able to solve complex problems while dogs give up. Here’s a comparison between a wolf and a husky:
“Derp”
Yes, wolves look like dogs under glass, but on closer inspection you quickly realize that there’s a massive difference. Just take a look at wild boars vs domestic pigs.
Here’s a good article that talks about the mental differences between dogs and wolves:
Tldr; We do, we just didn’t realize it, or they didn’t survive long.
Oh, and then there’s MoonMoon.