But, even if your dog is too dumb to figure out that the vacuum cleaner isnt a threat, or sometimes gets scared of her own tail, that doesnt mean shes any less perfect. “Regardless of a dog’s intelligence, however, the bond between a pet and their pet parent can be very deep and meaningful,” says Dr. Freeman.
The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University, published in the scientific journal Learning & Behavior, showed that, unless you already think your dog is a major doofus, you might be overestimating how smart your pup is. “During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to ‘prove’ how clever dogs are,” Professor Stephen Lea, of the University of Exeter, said in a press release. But, apparently, Lea and his teams findings didnt actually demonstrate as much.
Still, some experts say dogs are about as smart as a 2-year-old child. “In previous studies, dogs have demonstrated a level of intelligence equal to that of a toddler,” says Dr. Jennifer Freeman, DVM, PetSmart’s resident veterinarian and pet expert. “It’s been proven that they can understand up to as many as 250 words, signs, and gestures.”
Besides, Im willing to bet that your relationship with your cute canine has a lot more to do with her personality than how many phrases shes learned to recognize. You love her because she can never contain her excitement to see you when you get home every night. You love her because she loves you more than anything else in the world.More like this
However, dogs are skilled at a number of different things, even if they arent exactly the smartest members of the animal kingdom. For example, they can definitely pick up emotional cues: In a study published in the scientific journal PLOS One, researchers showed 31 dogs photos of threatening, pleasant, and neutral faces to figure out how they reacted. The research found that dogs are pretty good at determining human emotion by looking at a persons eyes and mouth. So if your pup notices you crying and comes up to lick your face, she probably isnt just scrounging for a treat. She might just understand what youre feeling.
Nevertheless, systematically reviewing the animal cognition literature, British psychologists Stephen Lea and Britta Osthaus found dogs to be unremarkable in their cognitive capabilities compared to wolves, cats, dolphins, chimpanzees, pigeons, and several other species. For example, dogs seem no better at learning associations—such as between a behavior and a reward—than other species. Similarly, dogs can spatially navigate within small spaces, but other species can, too. And while dogs have an excellent sense of smell, the “pig’s olfactory abilities are outstanding and might even be better than the dog’s.”
If you are convinced your dog is a genius, you may be disappointed in the conclusions of a study just published in the journal Learning and Behavior.The study finds that dogs are cognitively quite ordinary when compared to other carnivores, domestic animals, and social hunters. “There is no current case for canine exceptionalism,” the authors conclude.
David Z. Hambrick is a professor in the department of psychology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on individual differences in cognition and the development of expertise.
Case studies add to the perception that dogs possess uncanny intelligence. A striking example is a Border collie named Chaser. Trained from puppyhood by her owner, the late Wofford College psychologist John Pilley, Chaser has learned the names of more than a thousand toys. She even seems able to reason, as she demonstrated for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on the television program NOVA. Tyson begins by placing a random selection of Chaser’s toys behind a couch and asking her to retrieve several of them, which she does with dispatch. He then adds to the array a toy she has never seen—a Charles Darwin doll. Finally, he asks Chaser to “find Darwin!” Chaser walks behind the couch, and after a few seconds of hesitation, brings the doll to an astonished Tyson.
So even if dogs can’t follow hand signals as well as a bottlenose dolphin and their sense of smell is no better than a pig’s, their effects on our lives may be remarkable all the same.
So, the next time youre bragging about how smart your dog is to your friends, this study can sit in the back of your mind and nag you.
This study is special, since it measures the way people perceive the intelligence of our dogs, instead of the dogs actual intelligence. Two of the most interesting figures that resulted from the questionnaire were that around 25% of dog owners “agreed or strongly agreed that their dogs were smarter than most people” and almost half of the participants believed their dogs had a mental ability similar to a a “3-5 year old human child”. Along the same train of thought, most dog owners believed their dogs were socially intelligent. About 5% of respondents believed their dogs had the same mental ability of human 16+ years old.
This is a year for pet lovers. A study published in May demonstrated that your cat really ignores you, proving to the world that cat owners arent completely crazy. Unfortunately, the news isnt that great for dog owners. In a study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, Tiffani Howell and her team found evidence that people severely overestimate the intelligence of our pooch.
In case you were curious, Stanley Coren from Psychology Today compared our perception of our dogs intelligence with actual data on how smart dogs tend to be,
The study made a correlation that the closer a human is to their dog, the smarter they think the dog is – which is an understood psychological phenomenon.
When your dog is smarter than you think
If you are convinced your dog is a genius, you may be disappointed in the conclusions of a study just published in the journal Learning and Behavior.The study finds that dogs are cognitively quite ordinary when compared to other carnivores, domestic animals, and social hunters. “There is no current case for canine exceptionalism,” the authors conclude.
That we think otherwise is not surprising. Claims of canine exceptionalism abound, from people’s anecdotes about their dogs’ ability to read their minds (“Sparky looked into my eyes and then at the refrigerator—he knew I wanted a beer!”), to books with titles such as My Dog is a Genius: How to Improve your Dog’s Intelligence, to a canine intelligence test that will let you “find the genius in your dog.”
Case studies add to the perception that dogs possess uncanny intelligence. A striking example is a Border collie named Chaser. Trained from puppyhood by her owner, the late Wofford College psychologist John Pilley, Chaser has learned the names of more than a thousand toys. She even seems able to reason, as she demonstrated for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on the television program NOVA. Tyson begins by placing a random selection of Chaser’s toys behind a couch and asking her to retrieve several of them, which she does with dispatch. He then adds to the array a toy she has never seen—a Charles Darwin doll. Finally, he asks Chaser to “find Darwin!” Chaser walks behind the couch, and after a few seconds of hesitation, brings the doll to an astonished Tyson.
Another reason we may think our dogs are gifted stems from the way we view ourselves. When people are asked to rate themselves on traits such as intelligence, they tend to give above-average ratings. This Lake Wobegon effect—named after the fictional town created by Garrison Keillor where “all the children are above average”—extends to pets. In a study published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology, researchers had 137 pet owners rate both their own pet and the average pet on a range of traits, including intelligence. The results revealed that the people rated their pets as above average on desirable traits and below average on undesirable traits.
Nevertheless, systematically reviewing the animal cognition literature, British psychologists Stephen Lea and Britta Osthaus found dogs to be unremarkable in their cognitive capabilities compared to wolves, cats, dolphins, chimpanzees, pigeons, and several other species. For example, dogs seem no better at learning associations—such as between a behavior and a reward—than other species. Similarly, dogs can spatially navigate within small spaces, but other species can, too. And while dogs have an excellent sense of smell, the “pig’s olfactory abilities are outstanding and might even be better than the dog’s.”
Even more surprising, dogs do not appear to be exceptional in their ability to perceive and use communicative signals from humans. According to the domestication hypothesis, dogs have been bred to be especially sensitive to human cues such as hand signals. As Lea and Osthaus note, dogs can indeed use human cues. However, contrary to the domestication hypothesis, they are far from unique in this ability. For example, the reigning champions of the ability to follow human hand signals are the bottlenose dolphin and the grey seal.
None of this is to diminish the benefits of dog ownership. They keep us company and may even improve our physical health. In a study published last year in Nature Scientific Reports, Swedish researchers examined the relationship between dog ownership and cardiovascular health in a sample of nearly 3.5 million Swedish adults. As part of the public healthcare system, the Swedish government maintains registers of hospital visits and cause of death for all Swedish citizens and residents. Also, all dogs in Sweden must be registered with the government. The researchers were thus able to link health and dog ownership data.
Even after the researchers statistically controlled for age, education, and socioeconomic status, dog owners were significantly less likely to have had a heart attack and significantly less likely to have died from cardiovascular disease than non-dog owners were. What’s more, these benefits of dog ownership were largest for single people. While stressing that the results must be interpreted cautiously because they are correlational, the researchers suggest two possible explanations for the findings. The first is that owning a dog alleviates psychosocial stress caused by isolation and depression, which has been linked to cardiovascular disease. The second explanation is that dog owners, in taking their canine companions on walks, are more physically active.
So even if dogs can’t follow hand signals as well as a bottlenose dolphin and their sense of smell is no better than a pig’s, their effects on our lives may be remarkable all the same.
David Z. Hambrick is a professor in the department of psychology at Michigan State University. His research focuses on individual differences in cognition and the development of expertise.