How Clever Do You Think Your Dog Is?
Dog owners tend to over-estimate the intelligence of their dog in several ways, but get it right in other ways. So how clever do you think your dog is?
Maybe as smart as a four year old child?
P.S. Six reasons to love canine science and six ways to entertain your dog indoors.
Maybe as smart as a four year old child?
Photo: DragoNika / Shutterstock |
Canine researchers have been investigating dogs’ cognitive
abilities: whether they can solve puzzles, recognize our emotions, and so on.
But are ordinary people aware of these findings, and do they have a realistic
view of dogs? A paper by Tiffani Howell (Monash University) et al
investigates owner’s beliefs about their dog’s intelligence.
The research, published in the Journal of Veterinary
Behavior, involved a web survey that was aimed at both dog owners and non-dog
owners. However, because the overwhelming majority of answers came from people
who did own dogs, the analysis was restricted to this group. Although
respondents were perhaps not typical of the average dog owner – they were mostly
female (90%) and educated at post-secondary level (63%) – they may be typical of
people who take part in dog forums and discussion groups on the internet.
The questionnaire was completed by 565 dog owners, most of
whom (73%) reported that they were knowledgeable about dogs. The largest group
came from Australia, with the USA and UK also making up a sizeable number of
participants. The questions asked about perceptions of canine intelligence and
also about people’s relationship with their dog.
The results showed that owners think dogs have a range of
cognitive abilities, including being able to recognize people’s emotions, and
awareness of human attention. One interesting finding is that many of these
fell into two categories – an instinctive ability and a learned ability. For
example, people thought that dogs have an instinctive ability to be able to
solve problems, and that they are also able to learn how to solve a problem.
The researchers say, “the participants scored dogs very
highly in terms of the possession of complex cognitive skills. Respondents generally
seem to agree that dogs possess extensive social cognitive skills, many of
which have been established experimentally.” At the same time, owners typically
also believe dogs have abilities that have not yet been shown by researchers,
such as deception. It would be interesting to know more about how people form
their opinions about dogs.
In general, the results also showed that the closer the
relationship someone has with their dog, the higher they rate the dog’s
cognitive abilities. Similarly, people who said they knew more about dogs were
more likely to give high ratings for canine intelligence (except for instinctive
problem-solving, on which they gave lower ratings).
And so just how intelligent do most people think their dog
is? The average result was equivalent to a 3-5 year old child, with the next
most common result being the same as a 1-2 year human baby. A few people said
their dog was as clever as a human aged 16 years or older (do you think this was
a tongue-in-cheek reply?).
It’s important to gain a better understanding of what shapes
people’s beliefs about their dogs. The researchers say, “It is possible that,
in some cases, dog owners believe that dogs are cognitively capable of more
than they actually are and misconstrue normal dog behavior as an attempt at ‘dominance’
or a stubborn lack of obedience. “ This is especially important, they say,
given that behaviour is a common reason for dogs being given up to shelters or
euthanized.
I think many people who train their dogs experience a point
at which they think the dog already ‘gets’ a command, when actually the dog
doesn’t get it yet. This can be frustrating for both the dog (who doesn’t know
what to do) and the owner (who thinks the dog is being wilfully disobedient).
This research is a welcome step in gaining a better understanding of what
owners believe about their dogs.
So what do you think, how clever is your dog? And do you
think some breeds are smarter than others?
Reference
Howell, T. J., Toukhsati, S., Conduit,
R., & Bennett, P. (2013). The perceptions of dog intelligence and
cognitive skills (PoDIaCS) survey. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 8(6), 418-424.