Leading canine researcher, Stanley Coren from the University of British Columbia in one of his studies found that dogs’ intelligence is at par with that of a two-year-old human.
Coren also found that dogs can understand more than 150 words and are capable of intentionally deceiving other dogs and people to get treats or rewards. He also said that dogs can count up to five and have basic understanding of arithmetic and can notice errors in simple computations.
Coren who has published many books on dogs and dog behavior, has also reviewed numerous studies to conclude that dogs have the ability to solve complex problems and are more like humans and other higher primates than earlier thought.
“We all want insight into how our furry companions think and we want to understand silly, quirky and apparently irrational behaviours they demonstrate,” Coren said.
According to several behavioural measures, Coren says dogs’ mental abilities are close to a human child age 24 to 29 months. He added that the dogs’ intelligence is also according to their various types which makes a dog’s breed determine some of these differences. “There are three types of dog intelligence: instinctive (what the dog is bred to do), adaptive (how well the dog learns from its environment to solve problems), and working obedience (the equivalence of ‘school learning’), he revealed.
Data from 208 dog on obedience judges from the United States and Canada showed the differences in working and obedience intelligence of dog breeds. According to the study, Border Collies are number one; Poodles are second, followed by German Shepherds.
Fourth on the list are Golden Retrievers; fifth, Dobermans; sixth, Shetland Sheepdogs and finally, Labrador Retrievers.
As for language, the average dog can learn 165 words including signals and the ‘super dogs’ (those in the top 20percent of dog intelligence) can learn the location of valued items, better routes in the environment, how to operate mechanisms and the meaning of words and symbolic concepts.
These of course show the level of dog’s intelligence, but whether they truly are as intelligent as a two-year-old child may still be debatable.
-
-
-
-
