Dogs understand subtle gestures and social cues.
When it comes to understanding gestures dogs and young children start around the same level: If someone points to an object, both will be able to interpret the hand movement and find the object. Dogs are able to divine the meaning behind the gestures, and this is something that even chimps failed to do, according to a 2012 study in PLoS ONE.
Dogs also appear to be able to read subtler gestures such as social cues like using the direction of human gaze to find hidden food and objects — a task that apes also struggle with, The Scientist reports.
Doberman Pinscher – The Wise Watchdog
Slender, sleek and smart, the Doberman has a great intelligence to match their great physical presence. Surprisingly, Dobermans are a pretty modern breed in terms of the canine world, originating in the early 1880s for guard and protecting duties.
A tax collector called Louis Dobermann created the breed as he was in need of a guard dog due to his job requiring him to carry around lots of money. Nowadays, Dobermans find themselves as excellent police and military dogs, but also loving, affectionate fur-iends to many.
Of course, the Doberman was created to be the ultimutt guard dog, so they have a natural instinct to protect. This means they will be utterly devoted to you and will be very easily trainable. Don’t be put off by their guarding instincts however, their high levels of intelligence mean they have a natural ability to determine who is a fur-iend and who is a foe.
You will be able to train your Doberman to absolute paw-fection and as a result, you’ll have a dog that is well behaved, loyal, courageous and affectionate. Even though they have a reputation as fierce guard dogs, Dobermans are incredibly sweet and will shock you with their intellect.
Overall, Coren ranks 130 dog breeds, and his top 10 continues, including the Shetland Sheepdog, Labrador, Papillon, Rottweiler and the Australian Cattle Dog.
Dogs: Super-Savvy, Socially
Although every dog is unique, there is enough evidence to indicate that species-wide one of the really special things about dogs is how well they understand humans. “They are very attentive to and responsive to us, which is a great social cognitive skill,” Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, Columbia University, told me.
Researchers don’t entirely agree on why dogs are so socially savvy. The prevailing view is that their social intelligence is evolutionary: that over the thousands of years since wolves entered the human sphere and started to morph into the pets we know today, breeding has favored qualities that make dogs good companions to humans, such as friendliness and an affinity for us, which make them good at reading our behavior.
There’s also a theory that each dog simply acquires his or her social intelligence through the sheer amount of time spent around humans – that’s why puppy socialization is so important.
The answer might be a combination of these two factors – of evolution and socialization. Either way, the result is a species with a remarkable fondness for and understanding of humans.
This manifests in many ways. Zachary Silver, a Ph.D. student in the Comparative Cognition Lab at Yale University, studies the way dogs interpret the social world. “They’re extremely skillful at following our communicative cues, especially our points and our gazes,” he told me. “But it even goes a step further: they pay really close attention to how we interact with each other.” For instance, there’s evidence to suggest that, in some contexts, dogs will notice whether a human is helpful or unhelpful, and favor the helpful person.
Silver’s current research focuses on dogs’ understanding of humans’ perspectives: he’s working to build on previous findings indicating that, in some contexts, if food is hidden such that a dog sees one person observe the hiding and one miss it, they are more likely to take a hint about its whereabouts from the person who watched it being hidden. This suggests that dogs might be drawing all sorts of complex conclusions about what we know and feel.
As Silver observes, “Dogs do pretty sophisticated things regarding understanding our own perspective.”
If humans want to understand what it’s like to be a dog, the nose is an excellent place to start. It’s well known that dogs have a much more powerful sense of smell than humans, but did you know just how much more powerful? As Alexandra Horowitz outlines in her New York Times bestselling book “Being a Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell”:
This sense of smell gives dogs remarkable insights into their environment. Horowitz notes that a tracking dog can tell which direction someone is moving in from smelling just five of their footprints. And in some European countries, dogs’ noses now have the legal seal of approval: if a dog is able to identify a suspect based on smells left at the crime scene, that evidence is admissible in court.
This sensory difference is important because it gives us information about how dogs experience and interpret the world. Humans are primarily visual creatures, navigating by sight. Dogs, by contrast, process the world through their noses, and thus have all kinds of scent skills that are difficult for humans to conceive of.
By applying a little imagination about what it might be like to live in a scent-based world, we can better appreciate dogs’ cognitive abilities. For instance: dogs do not recognize themselves in mirrors, which had been thought to indicate that they don’t possess self-awareness. But Dr. Horowitz has demonstrated that dogs do recognize changes in their own smell, demonstrating “perhaps something somewhat like self-awareness,” she told me.
How to make your pet dog Smarter and Intelligent?
Some dog breeds are known for their high intelligence while others have a reputation for not catching on to things quite as quickly. But, dogs are individuals, there are exceptions to every rule, and intelligence can be shown in a variety of ways. Is your dog smart? Here are some signs of dog intelligence to help you answer the question: