- Dogs may be much brighter than we think — at least some of them.
They say an old dog doesn’t learn new tricks. Yet, scientists have now shown us that they can.
Not only that, they may do so by simply listening in on your conversations.
Every dog owner knows that pups can be very good at learning to recognize specific words. As proof, we point to all the people who can’t speak the word “walk” in their homes without unleashing a furry tornado.
Some pooches, however, are much more literate. New research has shown that they can learn the names of objects without ever seeing them.
The researchers had a conversation about a new toy within earshot of the studied dogs. Then, when told to go get that toy, which they had never seen, they did just that.
However, don’t get too hyped (or scared) about your dog’s capabilities for learning. The pups participating in the study were basically Einstein-level geniuses by dog standards, and even then, not all of them picked up the new words.
Yet, the study does show that dogs, or at least some of them, may be smarter than we’ve thought. And if you have a dog at home that seems to mysteriously find out about new treats and toys before you even bring them home, you now know why.
A Bunch of Brainiacs
It’s been common knowledge (at least in the circles where they study dog intelligence) for a long time that certain pooches have an excellent memory for words. There’s an elite group of about 50 dogs worldwide capable of remembering the names of hundreds of different toys and fetching them on command.
Even in this choice company, there are special cases. For example, a border collie called Chaser (who sadly crossed the rainbow bridge in 2018) was able to recognize more than 1,000 objects by name.
Recently, a research group wanting to study dog vocabulary chose 10 of these genius dogs for their experiment. The results of the study surprised both the researchers and the dogs’ owners.
Go Get the Toy!
The experiment was carried out in two phases. In the first, the dog’s owner would hold a new toy (a squeaky stingray or armadillo) and talk to another person about it.
Meanwhile, the dog was allowed to be in the vicinity. However, the owner didn’t address the dog directly or indicate that the toy was for the dog — although they made sure to name-drop the new toy a few times.
The new toy was then placed into a big pile of other playthings in a different room. Finally, the dog was told to go fetch that specific toy.
And what do you know? The dogs did just that, having only heard the toy’s name and seeing it at a glance.
In the second phase, things got more difficult. The dogs were allowed to see their owners hold a new toy, but the owner then placed it in a box, out of the dog’s sight.
After hiding the toy, the owner would then go have a conversation about it. This way, the researchers created a disconnect between the dog seeing and hearing about the toy.
Not that it made a lot of difference in the end, though. Even in this case, seven out of the 10 participating dogs went and picked up the new toy from the box, having learned to recognize whatever name their owners used for it.
How Do They Learn?
The study’s results are significant, as it wasn’t previously known that dogs could learn new words simply by eavesdropping. Few animals have the brain capacity for doing so, and those that do — such as chimps and parrots — are already well-known for their smarts.
What’s more, it’s currently unknown how the dogs make the connections to recognize a new toy only by hearing about it. The only thing we do know is that these were full-grown dogs, so they likely don’t learn the same way as, say, a toddler that hasn’t learned to recognize new words by listening.
An additional obstacle in figuring out what’s going on in dogs’ brains is that, as we mentioned, the study’s participants were unusually gifted pooches. Your regular dog (or my dim-witted Chihuahua, for that matter) is not capable of making these types of connections.
At least as far as we know for the time being. Maybe they can, but would rather keep quiet about it.