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Certain dogs are capable of learning the names for more than 100 different toys
- _yb2s 3y agoI adopted an older obese dog many years ago that seemed to understand hundreds of words, including the brand names of junk food. He would listen closely to human conversations. For example if someone mentioned socks, shoes, leash, walk or synonyms of those he would immediately go wait by the door for a walk.
- silverquiet 3y agoDogs can pick up on a lot of human things that aren't spoken; they're actually very good at body language. That and their ability to eat starch/more omnivorous diets are probably the biggest differences between them and wolves.
- InitialLastName 3y agoI once visited a wolf rescue where a wolf pup was being raised in a pen with two Great Pyrenees puppies (to socialize it with them). The biggest behavioral difference I noticed between the two was that while the wolf was willing to be (and perhaps even enjoyed being) pet and handled, it absolutely did not care that we were in the pen. It wandered off after a few moments checking out the new visitors, whereas the puppies (being puppies) wouldn't leave us alone.
- Loughla 3y agoThere is nothing in this world like a Great Pyrenees puppy at about 8 months. They're SO big, but SO dumb and cuddly. They're the perfect thing, and the embodiment of joy.
- airbreather 3y agoI have owned six dogs in my life, most recently getting a 7 week old pup staffy x ridgeback, now 16 weeks old. He goes with our 9 year old girl staffy, who can follow conversations, eg planning to go to the park or beach without directly mentioning it in any way. All my dogs have understood a lot of words, some more than others, but all way more than 20. The aspects that promote this, I believe, are this: 1. They are treated as companion animals. They live in the house with the humans and generally have full access thru the house. 2. No crating. Maybe if it is some kind of working dog, but a companion animal is a companion, and would you put a companion in a crate 22 hours a day? I don't care if you think that a dog comes to like the crate, I would say don't confuse familiarity with liking it. In what evolutionary precept is crating a thing that ever had any parallel in the wild? 3. You talk to the dog, like it is a human that can't speak. You tell it what you are doing using consistent language. Example, when leaving the house, we tell the dogs what we are doing and how long we will be. eg I am taking J to school, I'll be back soon. Or, I am going to work. Very quickly they learn and know what to expect and anxiety is reduced. I can tell because if I say I'm going to work, they immediately head to their favourite long term day resting spots.if I say I am going to the shops, they know I will be 30-90 minutes and there is a chance I will be returning with treats and hang around the door. Also just a few times now and then, especially early on, the dog will come with me to, say, drop the child at school, or visit work, so they can see where we go and understand a little better what goes on. Having the dogs live with as part of the family means sometimes there are problems, eg our pup is currently teething and just can't help himself with items of certain texture. We keep important things out of reach, close bedroom doors when not home and use mistakes a chance to teach. The older dog has never once got into the bin or any other such misdemeanours when unsupervised at home. I see a lot of people ignore their dogs most of the time, I wouldn't expect such dogs to have strong language skills, but try might. If they are around and a wake, ours are constantly talked to, just telling them what we are doing or what is going on. They learn to associate, often quite quickly. Also many owners seem to make little effort for language consistency, outside of obedience commands like sit etc. Living in the house, it's important the dogs are consistently treated in accordance with their position in the pack. What many people think is being kind, is people kind and dog mean. A dog is happiest when it knows its place. The happiness is not related to the level of that place, more the consistency of treatment. A dog confused about its place might instinctively feel the need to challenge for leadership of the pack, that's when people get eaten. If your dog is looking stressed and uncertain of its place, by challenging you in little ways, you need to do the little things to reinforce its position eg it does not go thru the door before you, it does not eat before you. Maybe you eat and leave a very small amount if food on your plate, which you then give the dog.you admonish any challenge for control, not meanly, but firmly.grasping the muzzle with your hand, not hard, can be enough. When just weeks old, that is what the mother does with her mouth, it is a powerful gesture ingrained almost instinctively. Pampering a dog is being mean to a dog, treats should be earned not given randomly, that is just confusing. Just like people, dogs behave the way you treat them. I learned from an ex military dog trainer who went way further in his work training, but those were special animals trained to cope with crowds etc and in that environment might be called upon to save someone's life one day. But many of the techniques used would shock most people, but make perfect sense when considered in the context of training a pack animal to be a working animal.
- soperj 3y agoThey should breed them... I'm sure we could select for language geniuses.
- whatsakandr 3y agoThat's a new breed I could support. Just throw together a bunch of different breeds of smart dogs. They'll be much mror healthy than most breeds of dog.
- sandworm101 3y agoBut creating any new breed, as in an actual breed rather than crossing mutts that will produce a variety of offspring, usually involved significant inbreeding. You need to weed out the genes that you don't want and concentrate on the few that define the breed in order to create a homogenous stock. Otherwise, in a couple generations the new offspring may pick start expressing the recessive genes and be nothing like the originals.
- bongodongobob 3y agoAfaik working breeds are the smartest and are already the most genetically diverse. Not sure if correlation or causation though.
- VHRanger 3y agoCorrect - border collies are what he described. When kennel clubs formed in the late 19th century to standardize breeds, the border collie stood apart by only testing for herding ability and not selecting on anything else. Other breeds were selected mainly for looking like what that breed looks like. Turns out border collies are consistently classed the smartest dogs. They also have less of the typical genetic issues other breeds have
- spike021 3y agoOn the other hand, smart dogs can be much more difficult to train. They can easily pick up what you're training them to do, but when you want them to actually do it the results can be far more mixed. This is because they're so smart that they seem to know whether doing the thing they were trained to do is worth it to them. Source: I have a Shiba Inu, which is simultaneously one of the smartest and most primitive of dog breeds. From the beginning he picked up tricks and other training extremely quickly, usually within a handful of repetitions. But he can be very independent and stubborn. He seems to know whether something is worth doing or not. Almost.....too smart.
- whatsakandr 3y agoIf you haven't seen "What About Bunny" on YouTube, I highly recommend it. The dog has learned to use buttons to communicate her thoughts quite effectively. My favorite is "Why bunny dog?"
- kelvie 3y agoThere's a massive sampling and confirmation bias with Bunny, though admittedly as a sheepdog owner the videos are very cute. Whenever I talk to e.g. coworkers about an impressive ML demo that was sped up and pre-recorded, I point to Bunny the dog to show how impressive a talking dog is.
- tigerlily 3y agoYes! And the one about the stranger in the paw (my memory is sketchy on the exact words). Mindblowing.
- cal85 3y agoI just watched a few videos and it’s seems obvious it’s all down to cherry picking and confirmation bias on the part of the owner. I’ve no doubt the owner believes the dog is deliberately constructing sentences, but that isn’t what’s happening.
- ksenzee 3y agoThere are some where I think you’re right, and some where there is pretty clearly some genuine communication going on. You might want to watch a few more.
- cal85 3y agoDogs and humans can clearly communicate. They recognise words and signal things they want all the time. And I don’t doubt the dog is pressing the buttons to interact with the owner. That is all pretty ordinary dog stuff, just with unusual equipment that makes it seem more exciting. But the dog is not forming sentences by pressing buttons in an intentional sequence. That would be awesome, but there is no evidence of that happening.
- treflop 3y agoI know I've seen videos of animals where I thought "damn, this one must be above the bell curve." And you know, there are individual humans vastly smarter than us so I figure there gotta be the same in the animal kingdom too.
- seunosewa 3y agoAnd you can legally breed them.
- thatfatboy 3y ago[flagged]
- throwaway98797 3y agolegally really changes the vibe of your comment
- seunosewa 3y agoNot allowed for humans. You can only breed yourself. :-)
- h2odragon 3y agoIntelligence doesn't pass reliably. You may be slightly more likely to get one smart pup in a litter from smart parents. Any given litter is likely to show the standard range of variation for the breeds. It's my observation that lots of people have dogs who are smarter than the person appreciates. People don't listen to their dogs, they just talk at them.
- msrenee 3y agoI'd say it passes reliably enough that some breeds are smarter than others. Over generations, I see no reason you wouldn't be able to consistently breed intelligent dogs.
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
- leot 3y agoIt's unclear why the researchers believe that when a dog doesn't learn the names of a bunch of toys it means that they can't. There are lots of things people are able to learn today that they "couldn't" a few years ago (programming, math, reading). How are the researchers able to tell that the limitation lies with the dog and not with the trainer/household?
- swatcoder 3y agoIndeed! The article talks about some kind of rare "genius" trait, but the findings just seem to demonstrate that there exists some dogs that were able to demonstrate a big vocabulary in their tests. Many people with dogs already knew that, but it's a sound finding to have citable anyway (especially since some people still hold weirdly dismissive beliefs about everyday animal intelligence). But it doesn't say anything scientific about whether this is an inherent trait rather than a contextual outcome, what the frequency of any such trait might be, whether the dogs that failed the tests were incapable rather than indifferent, etc. Of course, the exact same pattern of ovverstatement shows up in human behavioral and psychological research, so we shouldn't be surprised to see it here :)
- detourdog 3y agoI agree just like any learning it involves engagement of some type>
- binarymax 3y agoIf a dog can learn 100 toys, then they can learn 52 cards, and maybe play some poker.
- sandworm101 3y agoMemorizing 100 names for things might seem like a big deal, but I guarantee that all dogs have memory for 100+ smells associated with things. They would call us stupid for not being able to remember the smell of more than a few dozen objects. My point: don't judge intelligence based on how well an animal can replicate human behavior. Each of them can do things that make us look like the idiots.
- xeonmc 3y agoWhat do you mean fish are not stupid for being unable to climb trees?
- newman8r 3y agoBirds are able to do it as well, this popular bird on youtube seems to know at least that many words https://www.youtube.com/@ApolloandFrens https://www.youtube.com/@ApolloandFrens
- nicklecompte 3y agoIt wasn't clear to me from this that these dogs had any special cognitive abilities, as opposed to neurosensory abilities, e.g. maybe most dogs can't audibly distinguish human vowels and consonants well enough for this to work.
- RoyalHenOil 3y agoI wonder this as well. In my experience, dogs have a MUCH easier time learning hand signals than learning verbal cues. I wonder if dogs would generally be capable of learning many more words if they were taught in sign language.
- rashkov 3y agoI wonder if something like synesthesia could help them map language to smells
- pazimzadeh 3y agoWho can't remember the smell of more than a few dozen objects?
- at_a_remove 3y agoI've seen a few videos on YouTube of cats trained on these push-down language buttons, mounted in a hexagonal pattern, on a mat laying on the floor. The cats press a button and the button plays back a word which the owner has recorded. I'd like to see more testing out of it but the cats seem to be rather expressive. They pick the same button, so at least they are consistent in their wants. They have a few verbs in the mix, it seems, not just nouns. I wonder how dogs would do on these buttons.
- _whiteCaps_ 3y agoYou should check out Bunny the dog on Youtube / Tiktok.
- gs17 3y agoI've watched a few in the past and I'm not convinced the more complex interactions are "real" language use instead of operant conditioning combined with confirmation bias. Too many of the videos will have button sequences that seem random get assigned a meaning, and even non-request button presses will get attention. Buttons for "food", "water", "pet me", "play with me", "outside" almost definitely work. Before I lived with a cat again, I was skeptical of those as "well, duh, any of those buttons get a reward, they don't care what it is", but our cats ask for those specific things without buttons.
- at_a_remove 3y agoI've been on the lookout for that, but I was struck by some particular "conversations" that involved re-direction. "Sorry" "How about something else" "Mommy - Sick" and so on. There was some back and forth there that I could not quite discount.
- deathanatos 3y agoI know a dog that, if you've not paid attention to her water bowl and it's empty, and she wants water, will simply paw the rim of the bowl to cause it to overturn, which makes a loud clatter on the hard floor. Once she then has your attention, she'll give you a look, as if it say "water, let's go." I dare say she trained us — after all, we didn't teach her to do that. And sure, it's simple … but she's still purposefully communicating a desire/intent. (She's a good girl, too.)
- antisthenes 3y agoKnowing what we know about the variability within species, why would anyone NOT think that there is immense variations in intelligence in other mammalian species? Especially a species that we've been selectively breeding for specific traits, some of which include independence and the ability to problem-solve?
- _whiteCaps_ 3y agoI surprised that poodles were called out as a less obvious smart dog. My dog learned on her own that me holding keys + wearing glasses = car ride, while keys + no glasses = walk. It took me a while to learn how she knew what we were going to do.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoCurious how you determined what she had determined.
- bongodongobob 3y agoFor mine, when I have my keys he runs right to the car. Without them, he'll run past to the sidewalk. If I grab my keys and laptop (to go to work) he'll walk away and lay down.
- _whiteCaps_ 3y agoShe hates car rides, so she'd run and hide when she saw me with glasses on. I finally clued in the day I forgot to put my glasses on before going to the car, and she was happy to go outside.
- knodi123 3y agoMy dog recognizes different cars by their noise profile. So he'll wake up from a nap and get excited whenever my wife pulls onto our street, but stay down for any other car. It probably helps that we're the only prius on the block, but still impressive!
- _whiteCaps_ 3y agoOh yeah, had some dogs like that when I was a teenager. They could recognize my Firebird from a few blocks away. :-)
- alamortsubite 3y agoOur last cat did this, too (though in our case the car was a Mazda 3). It took me a while to realize what was going on.
- genman 3y agoOur dog is not particularly smart but once we counted that she knows at least about 20 words, one of those being "cat", so we use "that furry animal" instead when we talk to not agitate her for no reason.
- bongodongobob 3y agoI adopted an Australian Shepherd from a friend a year ago and I'm absolutely blown away by how smart he is. He even knows the neighbor dogs' names. I can say "go get spot!" and he'll run after the right dog. He knows all my family members names. He knows that "you've arrived" on Google maps means we are there. He knows that "power on" coming from my Bluetooth headphones means we are going for a walk. He gets the concept for new tricks in about a half hour. I do have to practice them daily, but he gets the gist almost immediately. I knew Aussies were smart and I'm not sure where he is on the bell curve, but yeah, some dogs really have a knack for language.
- sophacles 3y agoA good friend of mine had an Aussie who was really smart. My friend was a dog trainer, and she once told me "the secret is Grace (the dog) does most of it - the puppies learn better by watching her demonstrate, and she keeps them in line". One day a mutual friend of ours died in a car wreck. I went to see my friend and we were sitting there telling stories and grieving... Grace read the room and brought my friend her favorite movie on dvd - something she watched when she was feeling blue. Grace wasn't quite sure what to do for me, but she brought me the cup I usually drank from when I was visiting. I don't know how much of that to attribute to smarts, training, and/or natural empathy, but that was an impressive dog, and its an impressive breed for sure!
- bongodongobob 3y agoI believe it. Apparently that's how herding dogs train on farms. You just buy a puppy and it literally shadows the adult. They train themselves.
- RoyalHenOil 3y agoI have two koolies (an Australian herding breed that is very closely related to Australian shepherds, border collies, and kelpies). I got my older dog during the lockdowns when I had a lot of free time to train him, and I got my younger dog a couple years later, when I had much less time to train her. The younger one has taught herself almost everything the older one knows, mostly by observing him, but sometimes by him actively trying to teach her. When she doesn't know something, he shows obvious signs of frustration and urging: I give a command, he does the thing I'm asking for, she doesn't react because she doesn't know the command, and then he starts growling and harumphing (and sometimes even air snaps near her face to get her attention) until she follows his lead.
- hackeraccount 3y agoI've always thought my Grandmother's dog was a genius. It wasn't that the dog knew a lot of things - it was house trained of course, it would sit, fetch, heel and the biggest trouble I ever remember it getting into was scratching the bottom of door. That said I swear it figured out all of that stuff on its own because I'm pretty no one in the house invested 5 minutes trying to train that dog to do anything. I honestly think it just wanted to be a good dog. I would almost say the dog was mistreated because benign neglect is almost cruel to a dog but it wasn't that bad, the dog wasn't ignored, it just didn't get a chance to really shine. Poor muffin.
- a_gnostic 3y agoMy buddy swears his one year old kitten understands how to turn on the A/C, but lacks the opposable thumbs to do it effectively.
- paulpauper 3y agois it actual learning or a Clever Hans effect or other operant conditioning.
- gs17 3y agoThey attempted to reject a Clever Hans effect. >To minimize potential inadvertent cues from the owner, the instructions required the owners to place the dog's toys in a different room. Owners were instructed to ask for each of the toys while ensuring that at least three toys were available for the dog to choose from. For the test they had a camera in the room with the owner and another in the room with the toys (so the owner couldn't cheat by removing the other toys).
- oooyay 3y agoMy greyhound/pit mix knows my names of many of her toys. She also has a range of expressions she uses to disagree with me or tell me I'm wrong. Her favorite toy is this kevlar llama unicorn that my mother has resewn for her twice. If I tell her to bring me her lobster (also kevlar) sometimes she'll shake her head, bow, and then stare intently at me. She understands the prompt for, "What is it?" and will lead me to the thing she wants or fetch it. On multiple occasions she's brought me her llama instead. I thought this was a fluke for a while but if I argue with her enough she'll go get her lobster. She has a really big toy bin and she plays with a lot of toys, so selecting these two by name has always been curious. She also has toys for different purposes. The remnants of a Lamb Chop long lost are her snuggle toy, she doesn't play tug of war with it anymore. If you try to she'll display the same expression for dissatisfaction.
- gottorf 3y agoShe must get it from the greyhound. My pit shows occasional flashes of intelligence, but I think she's too anxious to behave smartly almost all the time...
- goles 3y agohttps://archive.is/E8PKp https://archive.is/E8PKp
- 11235813213455 3y agoI spend lot of time watching birds, and they are really having complex conversations, definitely more than 100 "words" too. And we can say the same about ants, (it's more chemical/touch communication). Basically all animals are smart
- whatindaheck 3y ago> Basically all animals are smart I think it would do us all good to remind ourselves of this more. It’s not humans vs. animals. We’ve all survived billions of years of evolution / natural selection. Even in “dumb” animals there is a bar present that got them this far.
- Scubabear68 3y agoThe amazing thing to me about dogs is the tremendous range of variability we have bred into them. Size, shape, color, intelligence, basic body makeup, senses, hunting instincts, even average life span vary by an astonishing amount. And sadly, of course, the selective breeding has also caused systematic weaknesses in some breeds (prone to bad hips, knee injuries, relatively short life span, etc). The genie is out of the bottle but I wish we could breed healthier animals.
- llamaLord 3y agoJust a quick note on this, it's not entirely appropriate to blame selective breeding "in general" for those issues. Quite often those issues come from specific selective breeding practises designed to make the dogs more "fashionable" by breeding specific aesthetic attributes over healthy dogs. That being said, there is an enormous community of extremely passionate breeders around the world who are absolutely dedicated to breeding HEALTHIER dogs, especially in breeds that are known to have issues due to poor breeding. We have a Boston Terrier we got from one such breeder after spending over two years looking for someone we trusted to do the process right, and we are so happy we did. Not only do we have an amazing pet, but we know we are activity contributing to the process of improving the overall health of the breed, even though it did cost us more to do. A few things to look for in order to pick a "good" breeder. 1. How many litters do each of their female dogs have over their lives. If a breeder is expecting them to produce more than two (three at the most) litters, that's a red flag. 2. Do the mums deliver naturally, or via C-section. We only learned through extensive research that some breeds (often including Boston's) almost all have to give birth via C-section because they've been so extremely bread. We specifically looked for a breeder who's dogs a born naturally. If the pups are so extreme in your they've been bread that the mum can't get them out naturally... Something has gone too far. 3. Is the breeder a "purist" when it comes to the breed. Now this is going to be the opposite of what most people expect, but you WANT a breeder who is 1930's levels eugenicist when it comes to their breed. Fundamentally, most of the issues from breeding come about through mongrelisation of the breed. Low quality breeders cross-breed dogs to introduce "cool" or "fashionable" new traits, without caring about the million other genetic inconsistencies they're bringing into the mix at the same time. A great example is with Boston Terriers we learned. The breed spec for them is VERY clear, they have a white base coat with a black or extremely dark brown "tuxedo" style coat covering their lower body and a portion of their front-legs. ANYTHING that has colours other than those three, is a cross-breed for fashion purposes. There is no such thing as an "albino Boston", or a "patterned Boston" etc etc, these are marketing names people came up with for mongrelised versions of the breed which will almost always have major health issues.
- br3d 3y agoI think what's way more interesting is that dogs can master class inclusion: they can understand that this toy is "Mr Shakey" and this toy is "Elephant" but they can also understand that there is a superordinate category of "toys" that includes both Mr Shakey and Elephant, and when asked "Go and get me a toy" can choose either. This is mind-blowing, as children normally have to reach 7 or 8 before they have a solid grasp of class inclusion [0] 0 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129264#:~:text=showing%20relatively%20early%20development.,by%20age%207%20or%208.&text=results%20clearly%20seem%20to%20refute,by%20age%207%20or%208 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1129264#:~:text=showing%20relat....
- grimgrin 3y agoI did not know what class inclusion was, but now I'm thinking it's more complex than that? After a little bit of reading. "all daisies are flowers" and not "all flowers are daisies", this example seems more like the "solid grasp" you're referring to. And not basic categorization that a 3 year old might have: "foods", "toys"
- br3d 3y agoHmm, I'm now struggling to remember basic developmental psych, but there's definitely a phase at which linguistic children struggle with things having two names (it can't be both "dog" and "Rex") but I think you're right - this phenomenon is subtly different to class inclusion. But either way, dogs can do something with language comprehension that speaking children can't, which is the bit I find really interesting
- thebeardisred 3y agoI'm a little disappointed that there is not a single mention of Psychologist John W. Pilley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Pilley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Pilley) nor Chaser the Border Collie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog)). Pilley did an extensive amount of work including teaching Chaser over 1000 nouns. This was repeatedly verified in trials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGlUZWNjxPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGlUZWNjxPA https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/science/chaser-border-collie-dies.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/science/chaser-border-col... https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/news/remembering-chaser-the-smartest-dog-in-the-world/ https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/news/remembering-chaser-th... edit: Added another link to the AKC article on Chaser.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> a little disappointed that's putting it mildly. It's hard to believe SciAm could even publish this. Neil deGrasse Tyson went on TV with Chaser and his owner. He tested Chaser by putting an unnamed toy in the pile, and then said "go get Darwin." ("Darwin" being an unused name) Chaser successfully figured out it must be the toy whose name he didn't know.
- AlbertCory 3y agoWhile Ernie is certainly smart, I've found one gap in his IQ: He has some favorite houses because the person who lives there gives him treats. Several times, we'll see that person on the street and then pass their house, and Ernie still gets excited. I tell him, "Ernie, we just saw Jan. She can't possibly be in the house." He never listens.
- technothrasher 3y agoYeah, my pup gets very excited when my wife comes home and can even tell the sound of her car before she sees it. But... I can tell her, "mom's home!" and she'll get very excited and start running between the front and the back door, when "mom" is actually sitting right next to me in full view. On the other end of the intelligence scale, I've got a buddy with a pup who I once told to get a stick, which he dutifully did and when I said, "no, not that stick, the one by the ball" he quickly dropped it and went and got the one by the ball. You can also tell him which color ball to get and he will.
- Intralexical 3y agoAw. Associative memory. Well, the causality's misattributed, but humans do that all the time.
- iskander 3y agoMy dog seems to know least the names of 6 family members, 4 friends, and names of ~6-7 other dogs (in that she can go to those individuals on command). She also knows: cat, dog, cow, horse, friend, hello, "dai lapu" (Russian for give me your paw), "sidi" (Russian for sit), sneak, "bang" (for playing dead), dinner, breakfast, bath, outside, "go potties", and probably quite a few other snippets of English. She also knows how to open windows in a car and looks for the buttons before pressing them with her paw.
- ggm 3y agoOlaf Stapleton "Sirius"
- fionaellie 3y agoHow can I teach my dog the names of her toys?
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoClicker training
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoEverybody thinks their dog and/or child is a genius. But I've had a lot of dogs. Even within the same litter, some are bright, and some are dumber than a box of hammers. If your dog is smart, that's great, but your next one of the same breed might not be. Some individual dogs also don't take well to training, while others do. It's way more about the individual than the breed.
- motohagiography 3y agoIf dogs are smarter than we knew, what are some additional tasks we could give them? I have manuals for disability support dog training (opening doors, getting medications, helping to dress, etc) but maybe we could teach them to: - clean or arrange rooms or outdoor spaces - find and pile firewood - collect litter - convey messages to named people What else?
- doubled112 3y agoThere's something very human about "hey, this thing is smart, better put it to work for us"
- m3kw9 3y agoNot sure why dogs and other smartish animals couldn’t make the jump like humans
- nyjah 3y agoMy German shepherd is 9 and tho I don’t think she could learn 100 different toys, it’s fun to be like “blue ball” and “go get a toy… no not that one” etc. Beyond learning that stuff, this dogs emotional radar is incredible. When she was younger if I was watching sports and something stupid would happen she would immediately comfort me and climb in my lap. And as she’s gotten older I don’t even have to say anything. If I am quiet deep in thought about something that is upsetting me, she knows it. Just beyond a sweet heart dog. Definitely seen articles about yawning in unison with dogs and that’s exactly me and her. She’s basically my shadow. I’m convinced she can hear my heart beat and listens to my breathing. It’s always funny to reach for the tv remote and she’s getting up because that’s become a cue. Dogs have a lot of those.
- tmnvix 3y agoI do wonder if dogs recognise when other dogs are particularly intelligent/unintelligent. Given that there seems to be such wide variation amongst breeds, I'd assume so.
- shireboy 3y agoWe had a Westie that we trained to do this. We’d make him “wait” then we’d his toy, and say “ok go find it” . He’d go all over looking for it and enjoyed the game. I highly recommend a community training camp if there is one in your area.
- iancmceachern 3y agoWe have poodles, always have, they know amazing things, words, behaviors, when somethings "up", how to manipulate us. Love reading everyone else's anecdotes.
- tguvot 3y agohave two standards. both smart but in a different ways. one totally understands your intentions. the other one is "street smart" and tries to manipulate us
- iancmceachern 3y agoTotally, it's funny, one of ours manipulates the other. He'll bark, knowing he's not barking at anything, just to get our other dog to react. He'll even look right him, bark like someone is at the window/door, and then just calmly take his spot as our other runs away.
- tguvot 3y agoyeah. same with treats/toys. she tried to pull off multiple times same thing with us, bark at door (and then runs back to see our reaction) in order to make us leave table with food, but we were able to outsmart her :)
- hannasm 3y agoHumanity has a choice about whether to help these intelligent animals reproduce more than the dumb ones. We've already taken over a great deal of the free will of every animal on the planet but especially domesticated animals. Developing the genetics of additional intelligent beings on this planet is entirely within our capability if we want to invest lives. The advent of dogs from wolves in, iirc, about 50 years is a testament to Darwinian ideas. Reducing our planet to a desert wasteland is also an option. I'm a huge dog lover but it would be fantastic if we could find ways to coexist with more species in the long term as well. Given our own, still somewhat precarious existence, bringing up other species is of limited priority. Take care of your pets and buy your zoo memberships at least
- w0de0 3y agoIs free will something asapient animals ever possessed?
- tedpetershn 3y agoMy daughter taught her Australian Shepherd to make Sushi... https://www.instagram.com/p/C3jX6nzu5Ce/ https://www.instagram.com/p/C3jX6nzu5Ce/
- fumeux_fume 3y agoJust adopted a very sweet Irish Wolfhound mix. She's as dumb as bricks or just has no desire to impress us with any display of intelligence. I would be floored if she was able to produce any toy on command let alone a specific one, lol.
- gnyman 3y agoYes! After scrolling past everyone else who explains how smart their dog is it's great to find someone who has the same kind of dog as we do. Finnish lapphund here. And yea, I agree that it's hard to know if the dog is just dumb, or independent and lacking any ambition to please us by learning "silly" games. One thing one trainer I listened to said was that some dogs are actually more like cats. That stuck with me, and I have kind of accepted that she will probably never be the kind of dog that follows my hints and commands blindly. The important thing is after all that she doesn't have any "dangerous" traits like aggression or being over protective.
- WalterBright 3y agoPeople have bred dogs for all kinds of attributes. Why not breed dogs for language skill?
- bradley13 3y agoAnyone with a working breed dog - especially a herding dog like a border collie, kelpie, etc - will not be surprised. They can be scary smart. I've seen my wife teach our kelpie a new "trick" in just a minute or two. A few repetitions to attach a command to the action, and done. We can't even keep track of it all, but the dog will remember, even months later. N.B. Please realize that these dogs are not just pets. They need a job, or to be kept busy. Otherwise, they will invent a job, like dismantling your house.