Dogs can remember 12 object names in a week, the same as an 18 month old baby, but they still remember them months later.
“Sit down”, “let’s go outside” or “give me the paw” are commands that dogs can easily obey and many owners love to show off their pets’ prowess. For this reason, the Genius Dog Challenge to scientifically measure whether they were exaggerations or if they were really smart. The end result is that some dogs are very smart.
An initial study from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, showed a few months ago that, like humans, dogs can also be talented, as they learn the names of some objects just by hearing that word four times.
34 families with dogs of different breeds participated in the analysis. They were asked to teach their pets two names for two objects. Only one border collie managed to pass the test, and surpassed the researchers’ expectations by learning 21 new words.
The researchers also found that although animals quickly assimilated new terms, they couldn’t remember them for long. But why can’t they retain them for the long term?
a nice border collie
The author of the study, the Dr. Claudia Fugazzaand your team revealed now at the Royal Society Open Science that dogs can remember 12 object names in a week, the same length as an 18-month-old child. Also, dogs retained most of these names for up to two months later.
To enter the Genius Dog Challenge’s “genius” contest, owners had to prove that their dogs knew the names of at least 26 objects. Although this trial was not physically performed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it could be performed online, following prescribed instructions.
The chosen ones were the owners of six border collies who had a week to teach their dogs the names of six objects, spending between half an hour and two and a half hours a day. On the last day, instructions were sent to install cameras in two rooms of their homes. The objects were placed in one room and the owners in the other, so that the dogs would not be distracted.
This is how dogs learn human language
In the first test, three dogs scored perfectly and the rest passed easily. The researchers made the experiment more difficult by doubling the number of objects the pets had to remember. No dog reached 100% this time, but the average increased.
A month later, without practice, the dogs were tested again and five of them achieved perfect marks, although for the first time one failed. Even after two months, four dogs managed to get 50% of the words right.
Adam MiklosiThe co-author of the report said that with these “genius” dogs there is a unique opportunity to study how another species understands human language and how word learning influences the way we think about the world around us.
REFERENCES
Acquisition and long-term memory of object names in a Gifted Word Learner dog sample