The study involved 11 label-learner dogs participating in eight cognitive tasks, testing curiosity, learning, memory, and more.
A new study suggests that curiosity, focus, and self-control may be the secret traits that set genius dogs apart from others, a first step that researchers believe could lead to a puppy IQ test. The University of Portsmouth’s Dog Cognition Centre and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena’s Dog Studies Unit teamed up to study, for the first time, the characteristics that make a dog a label-learner, or canines that can recognize hundreds of objects by name alone.
These types of dogs are “extremely rare,” and they have an innate ability, researcher and professor Dr. Juliane Kaminski said in a statement. The study, published in Nature Scientific Reports, examined 11 label-learning dogs from the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. The selected dogs—border collies, crossbreds, Spanish waterdogs and pugs—each demonstrated their skills by participating in eight cognitive tasks that tested curiosity, problem-solving, learning, memory and human communication. Researchers found three traits that set these genius canines apart: curiosity, focus and inhibition. A stock image of a border collie playing tug-of-war with a colorful rope. The study showed that label-learner canines spent significantly more time inspecting new objects and looked at them more frequently than the control dogs. This suggests a greater curiosity toward new objects. These smarter-than-normal dogs also showed a targeted interest in specific objects. Unlike most dogs, which may explore toys or objects randomly, label-learners focused on specific items and studied them closely. And finally, a dog’s self-control was better among label learners than among regular dogs. The study found that inhibitory control is an important cognitive skill, as it prevents impulsive reactions. But this trait did not surprise Dr. Juliane Bräuer, a German collaborator on the study. “My own dog who is not a label learner always struggled to inhibit her preferences when solving problems,” she said. “She likes a ball so much, that she would not fetch a ring when a ball is present.” One of the dogs in the study, Harvey, has been dubbed one of Britain’s smartest dogs after memorizing the names of 203 toys. The study helped shed light on Harvey’s unique talent, driven largely by his curiosity. But this is just the beginning for researchers. “We will be carrying out further research as we must explore whether these traits are part of the makeup of some individual dogs from the puppy stage, or whether they develop over time and can be influenced by training,” Kaminski said. While research will continue, the team considers this study the first step toward developing a “Puppy IQ Test” that would assess young dogs’ ability to retrieve household objects by name. This type of test could help identify puppies with strong learning potential, including those well-suited to become a service dog. Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend, and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
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