It’s hard to say what’s happening in the video. If the ape is given a command-object-location and must discern all three to correctly complete the task, that wo

It’s hard to say what’s happening in the video. If the ape is given a command-object-location and must discern all three to correctly complete the task, that would be difficult for a dog. (However, I suspect with as many hours of training as the ape has had, a dog could probably do it. I speculate it would learn all possible trios and remember them as individual commands rather than reconstructing them.) If the ape is instead given an object and already knows he’s supposed to put it in the fridge, yes, a dog can do that easily. Given a command-object or command-location, a dog can do that as well. A dog can discern “Go bed” or “go kennel” or “fetch ball” or “fetch toy”. “Put ball bed” would be tough. (Dogs won’t “hear” all the cruft words like “the”, they’ll focus in on words they know and puzzle away.) In any case the degree to which the ape in the video “understands” isn’t clear. It’s possible even with command-object-location test, the ape is doing what I suspect the dog would do. The difference between them might be scale, rather than kind.