If your dog can sort its toys rather than ripping them to shreds, you may have a genius on your hands. That’s because scientists have now pinned down the characteristics of a unique type of genius dog – and it all comes down to how well they know their toys.
So what makes a genius? As smart as you think your pooch is, we’re not talking ‘paw’ or teaching them to use the toilet. The dogs the researchers behind the study were interested in are known as Gifted Word Learner (GWL) dogs.
These pups know the names of their toys and can retrieve them on command. So, if you say ‘Bring me Snail’, your dog runs off and returns (likely with its tail wagging) with its cuddly snail toy in tow.
Published in Scientific Reports, the study confirmed that these canine geniuses are incredibly rare. In fact, it’s one of the first to investigate the characteristics of these dogs in depth, with a sample size of 41 rather than just one or two dogs.
They found that, on average, the genius dogs knew 29 toy names. However, GWL dogs learn words so quickly that, by the time the study had finished, 50 per cent of the pups in the study knew the names of over 100 toys.
To make sure these dogs were the real deal, the researchers asked the owners to first send in videos of their dogs retrieving their toys by name. After this stage, the researchers met the owners in their ‘virtual lab’ to test this toy retrieval in more controlled conditions.
The team then gave each of the owners a survey to fill out – asking them about their dog’s life experience, the owners’ experience of training them, and how the dog learned the toy names.
The study, conducted by scientists from Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), in Hungary, reveals that owners of GWL dogs report that their gifted pups are able to learn a new toy name in under 30 minutes.
If you’re thinking of acquiring one of these fluffy prodigies, certain breeds are more likely to be GWLs than others, the study suggests. For anyone who’s watched dog championships, it may not be surprising that 56 per cent of the GWL dogs in the study were border collies. However, there were several non-worker breeds too, including a corgi and a Shih Tzu.
What’s more, you don’t need any special training to have a GWL dog. The majority of owners surveyed did not have a professional background in dog training. In fact, most of the owners didn’t even intend to teach the dogs this trick: just by talking to them about their toys (‘Do you want to play with your Snail?’), the dogs picked up their names and stored them in their memory.
These dogs are so rare that the researchers actually struggled to find enough dogs for the study. They spent 5 years looking for dogs around the world with these talents and eventually found 41 across 9 countries by using social media and by broadcasting their (adorable) experiments.
“Because GWL dogs are so rare, until now there were only anecdotes about their background” said Prof Adam Miklósi, head of the Ethology Department at ELTE and co-author of the paper.
“The relatively large sample of dogs documented in this study helps us to identify the common characteristics that are shared among these dogs, and brings us one step closer in the quest of understanding their unique ability”.
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