What Science Has Learned about Canine Intelligence
Psychology professor Dr. John Pilley was an avid dog owner his entire life. When his beloved Border Collie mix Yasha died, he thought she would be irreplaceable. He also thought, based on his work training Yasha, that dogs could not distinguish the meaning of different words. One night, he was sitting around a fire with some farmers and made the statement that, based on scientific research, dogs could not learn names, including their own. One of the farmers spoke up, asking PIlley, “Then why can I call one dog out of a pack of four, ask him to go get two sheep out of two hundred, and he’ll do it every time?”
That conversation led Pilley to his relationship with Chaser, one of the most famous dogs in recent history. Over the next 14 years, Chaser learned thousands of words, with her formal education beginning when she was just two months old. It took her just three days to understand the word “blue,” so that she could retrieve a blue ball from anywhere in the house.
What Does Science Say about Canine Intelligence?
The training and work that Professor Pilley did with Chaser showed that dogs exhibit many of the behaviors that researchers commonly associate with intelligence:
- Advanced memory skills—Chaser could identify as many as 30 different kinds of balls. She knew the names of other dogs in the neighborhood and would respond with positive or negative behavior when the other dog’s name was spoken out loud. Pilley said she would remember a person’s name after hearing it only once.
- Understanding of body language—While Chaser learned to respond to verbal statements and commands, she was also taught hundreds of non-verbal commands that involved pointing, gesturing or using hand signals
- The ability to link nouns and verbs—Chaser demonstrated an ability to combine nouns and verbs, rather than simply identifying a single person, object or action
In other studies, dogs have been shown to:
- Express behaviors similar to complex human emotions, including jealousy and expectation
- Understand and differentiate the expressions on a person’s face
- Learn by inference, watching other dogs and learning from their behaviors
- Engage in complex cognitive behaviors, such as deception
You always knew your dog was smart…now, it seems, there’s mounting scientific evidence to support their mental acuity.
