🧠 Is Your Dog a Genius? Try This...

Is your dog a…genius? Let’s find out.

Wait. You mean to tell me that my dog that barks at the wind is a miniature Einstein?!

It’s possible.

Dogs regularly make top-10 lists of the world’s smartest animals. As any pet owner has likely noticed, though, some dogs—like some people—are sharper than others. And a few might even be, in canine terms, geniuses. As researchers describe in Scientific Reports, certain dogs are capable of learning the names for more than 100 different toys. Remarkably, most of the dogs in the study seemed to do this spontaneously, without any special training from humans.

“Owners just notice one day that their dog knows the name of toys,” says the paper’s lead author Shany Dror, a doctoral candidate in ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. “Someone says, ‘Pizza,’ and their dog suddenly comes with the pizza toy.”

My dog knows how to get his “Lamby”. Is this the same thing?

It’s more extensive…

Dogs have been living in tandem with humans for some 15,000 to 20,000 years and are constantly exposed to language. “The way we interact with our dogs is very similar to how we do with our infants,” Dror says. “The connection dogs form with human caretakers is also very similar to infants.”

Yet at some point, she continues, babies learn to talk, while puppies do not. Only a few researchers have tried to explore the origin of that difference. Dror, who is also a professional dog trainer, wanted to find dogs with an aptitude for language. First, she tried to train 34 dogs from typical households to learn a set of vocabulary words. “That was a miserable failure,” she says. “We all worked really hard, but after three months, they didn’t even know the names of two toys.”

So rather than trying to teach dogs, she decided to put out a call for owners of particularly astute canines to come forward. She and her colleagues also launched the “Genius Dog Challenge,” a live YouTube-broadcasted game that pits smart dogs against one another to see which possesses the greatest linguistic prowess. After five years, the researchers identified 41 “gifted word learner dogs,” or ones that knew the names of at least five toys. The dogs came from nine different countries on three continents and included a range of breeds.

When Dror first gathered the data, which were validated on video calls online, the 41 dogs knew an average of 29 words for toys, and the top performer among them knew 86. By the time the researchers were finalizing their new paper, 16 owners reported that their dogs now knew the names of more than 100 toys.

Do we know what distinguishes these geniuses from other dogs?

Dror’s colleagues do not know what differentiates canine wordsmiths from average dogs. The animals in the study were very motivated to play with toys and also paid close attention when their owners spoke. But as Dror points out, these are hardly unique traits among dogs. She suspects that dogs’ early rearing environment, combined with some form of natural talent, plays a role in whether they become gifted word learners, but “we still do not know the elements that compose each of these factors and how the two interact,” she says.

Is there a breed correlation?

Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Boston University, who was not involved in the research, says that it’s interesting to see in the study that not all working dogs—or those bred to be herders, hunters or trackers—can become gifted word learners. Yet almost all gifted word learners are working breeds. Those include the obvious breeds such as shepherds and labs but also less obvious ones such as poodles. “At least until recently, when beauty standards have evolved and probably affected the gene pool, breeds were carefully selected to learn and respond to aspects of human speech over thousands of years,” Pepperberg says.

How can I test my dog?!

Funny you ask. I obviously need to know if my corgi can easily understand how to bring me the tv remote, too.

Testing your dogs dognition is possible. This company has a leg up on providing an assessment for your pooch that can determine how far (or short) your dog’s intelligence actually goes.

Tread carefully, juiceheads. Diving down this rabbit hole is a one-way ticket to being further disappointed in your little moron. 😊

Man wins $4,000,000. See what he does next.

A Massachusetts man brought his dog with him to claim a big lottery prize, and he plans to use part of his winnings to help animals. 

Peabody resident Paul Riley took "Raven" to Lottery headquarters in Dorchester, where he picked up a $4 million check for hitting the jackpot on a 100X Cash scratch ticket.  

Riley opted for a one-time payment and will take home $2.6 million before taxes. Some of that cash will go toward a new car for his wife, but he's also looking to support some furry friends.

"An animal lover, he said he plans to use his winnings to make a donation to the Animal Rescue League," the Lottery said in a statement.

Summit Variety in Peabody sold the winning ticket, and will get a $40,000 bonus for the sale.

We’d like to know if Raven needs a dog sitter 👀

“The Squeeze”: Dog News In 60 Seconds

• 🧜‍♀️ This dog with 6 legs is getting a couple extra limbs removed. Her name is Ariel because two of the legs are fused together like a fin. She’s adorable.

• 🐕 New studies are revealing why dogs wag their tails which further proves our entire lives have been lies!

• 🚨 This owner fell into a frozen lake. This would’ve been a life ender… until Ruby came on the scene.

• 🤖 Sick of robot dogs yet? Us too… but they’re painting now and their art is fetching upwards of $40,000.

• 🍽️ Purina: stop gossiping! No one is getting sick from our food! The rumor mill is running rampant. They’re squashing it.

• 🎮 “He’s in beast mode!” This dog just set a video game world record.

• 😬 According to vets, pandemic puppies are having behavioral issues.

Today’s Last Laugh:

When mom’s away the dog will play…

@kate29090

Pov: checking your dog camera 🤓 #dogsoftiktok#dog#viral#foryoupage#fyp#puppyhomealone#doghomealone#dachshund#dachshundpuppy#savedog#carla