“The wolf is solving the “situational problem” at hand, while the dog is solving the “what does the Man want Me to do here?” problem.”
Yes, very well put.
There is no animal (chimps included) that outperforms dogs in understanding human gestures. I don’t think we actually bred this into dogs (fossils of wolves, wolf/dogs have been associated with humans for better than 100,000 years) but rather this is the result of a common natural process known as Mutualism that as you say rewards a species “with a long term survival edge”. IMO dogs are simply wolves occupying an ecological niche. The better they understand humans the better suited they are for the niche.
Retrievers are specifically BRED and TRAINED to follow human directions instead of their logic, in certain circumstances.
As a matter of fact, I was out today with our pro trainer and a couple of other retrieving club members doing what we call "De-Cheating Drills" which are designed to reinforce the dog's obedience to the handler in the face of what looks like an easier way.
We were working on water de-cheating today. Essentially, when you throw a bird or bumper across a small body of water, the dog looks at the situation and realizes that it's FASTER to run around the bank rather than swim through the water. But we want the retriever to take a straight line to and from the bird, even if it's slower.
So you throw a bumper down a long body of water and send the dog. The dog's natural inclination is to swim to the bank immediately and run back. If the dog goes to the bank, you stop him with a whistle, take him back to where he left the water, sit him, throw the bumper back to the straight line in the water, go back to the line, handle him with an "over" command back to the line, and whistle him on in.
Here's the kicker: we could not get either of my dogs to cheat, even when we threw the bumper 20 feet down the shoreline and only 3 feet from the bank. They KNOW that the water is where I want them. One of them is a show Lab that has had it trained into her, but the little one is from a high-up Field Trial line and she has NEVER cheated, always takes a straight line. It's bred into her.
Probably more information than you wanted, but I just got downstairs from washing off the pond slime.