Is Your Dog Gifted? Animal Behaviorists Reveal How You Can Tell

Animal behaviorists have revealed how you can tell if your dogs are highly gifted—if they recognize the names of their toys.

It’s no secret that dogs can pick up simple tricks like “sit” or “fetch.” But scientists have discovered that some rare dogs can display extraordinary skills—for example, some dogs can learn hundreds of names and associate them with different dog toys. These dogs are known as Gifted Word Learners (GWL).

Before now, scientists knew very little about these dogs and how they became so intelligent—a new study published in the journal Scientific Reportsof researchers from the Family Dog Project at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, are now shedding light on these rare dogs.

Although finding dogs to study with this level of talent was a challenge, they ended up finding 41 dogs from nine different countries.

They found that 56 percent of these dogs were border collies—a dog breed known for being highly intelligent, loyal and friendly.

But scientists have discovered that this talent is not exclusive to race. A pair of Pomeranians, a Shih Tzu, a Pekingese, a corgi, a poodle, and several mixed breed dogs were also found to be capable of learning the names of toys.

“This is a citizen science project,” said Claudia Fugazza, project team leader, in a statement. “When a dog owner told us they thought their dog knew the names of the toys, we gave them instructions on how to self-test their dog and asked them to send us the test video.”

The owners of these dogs were then asked to fill out a questionnaire.

“In the questionnaire, we asked the owners about their dog’s life experience, their own experience in raising and training dogs, and about the process by which the dog learned the names of his toys,” Andrea Sommese, a co-author of the study, said in a press release.

The researchers were surprised to learn that most owners don’t actually teach their dogs the names of their toys.

“But instead dogs seem to spontaneously pick up toy names in unstructured play sessions,” Shany Dror, a lead researcher on the project, said in a statement.

Most owners also do not have a professional background in dog training. In fact, there appears to be no correlation between owners’ training skills and dogs’ ability to learn the names of its toys.

It really appears that these dogs are so smart, that they don’t need specific training to learn these dog names.

“In our previous studies we showed that GWL dogs learn new object names very quickly,” said Dror. “So, it’s not surprising that when we did a test on dogs, the average number of toys the dogs knew was 29, but when we published the results, more than 50 percent of the owners reported that their dogs had acquired. a vocabulary of more than 100 toy names.”

Scientists hope that this study will help further research in understanding these dogs.

“Since GWL dogs are rare, until now there are only anecdotes about their background,” said professor Adam Miklósi, head of the Ethology Department at ELTE and co-author of the study, in a press release. “The extraordinary ability to learn object names is the first documented case of the talent in a non-human species. The relatively large sample of dogs documented in this study, helps us identify common traits that is shared with these dogs, and brings us one step closer to finding an understanding of their unique abilities.”

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