Posts Tagged Pets
Believe it or not: Some dogs are as smart as a 5-year-old.
Emily Anthes, a science reporter for the New York Times, wrote a story early this year on how Dogs Build Their Vocabularies Like Toddlers. It featured an adorable picture of Miso, a 6-year-old male border collie from Canada, who knows the names of about 200 toys. She followed this up with an article this month In Defense of Dumb Dogs, confessing that her dog Watson is at the other end of the intelligence spectrum—knowing only the word “treat” and then needing to be led to it due to his poor hunting skills.
I found it very interesting that, though scientists figure that dogs may be on par cognitively with children between 1 and 3 years old, many owners claim that their pets are as smart as a 5-year-old. This is obviously a case of parental bias with dogs being treated as a member of the family, as evidenced by only 6% of owners in a 2025 YouGov survey admitting that their pet was below average. I love stats like this!
I have enjoyed dogs all my life and observed a surprisingly wide range of mental capability. My guess is that about half were below average. ; ) The smartest and best trained pets were a series of Springer Spaniels my father owned, all named “Dixie”—the last of which lives on after Dad passed away early last year at the age of 95. He loved to send his current Dixie off to play the piano. But none of the Dixie’s learned to sing like the beagle Buddy Mercury did.
Of course, canine intelligence varies greatly by breed. See a report by the American Kennel Club (AKC), updated April 6, for the top 20 results of a Study Measuring Canine Intelligence Ranks Breeds as the Smartest. I am not at all surprised to see the border collie being the “paws down” winner. While in Scotland years ago, I watched Bob and his owner demonstrate their sheep herding. It was amazing!
My favorite breed, the golden retriever, comes in at number 4. My wife and I owned two goldens—one (a male) being far more intelligent and fun than the other (a female), but both were adorable and great with our 5 kids. The springer spaniel achieved the #13 rank.
Another, older, list by the same scientist, Stanley Coren, starts off just a bit differently but goes on to rank a total of 100 dog breeds. Check it out here in this post by HubPages. I see that the beagle fared very poorly, though any dog that can play the piano and sing ranks highly in my estimation.
PS: Professor Coren attributes 51% of a dog’s intelligence to its genes and the other 49% to environmental circumstances. Such exactitude bothers me—I’d just say about half and half and suggest that a ‘nature-versus-nurture’ stat like this is very debatable. However, seeing how well my dad did with his dogs by nurturing them far more than me or my six younger siblings (all of us very jealous, ha ha), I am certain that environment makes a big difference in bringing out native intelligence.
Creatures (other than cats) with innate sense of direction and purpose
I am continually amazed by creatures great and small who know just where to go and what to do. For example, who would have thought that a dog could apply calculus to find the optimal angle at which to jump into a lake and fetch a tennis ball. See the proof here from a mathematics professor who worked it out after observing his Welsh Corgi “Elvis”.
Naturally ants do very well going about their business, as we’ve all observed when they get into our homes. I was alarmed to hear recently that these industrial insects apply an algorithm for building bridges over any gaps that hinder their travel. See how they do it in this 2/26/18 blog by Quanta Magazine. Things are getting a bit too ‘swarm’ for my comfort when entire institutes such as this one do nothing but model collective behavior. To what ends will this knowledge be applied? I foresee it being used by the military to program hordes of diabolical drones. But, perhaps, it will mainly be for more peaceful pursuits, such as managing traffic on par with ants, who according to this report, never get into a jam.
But just counteract the notion that creatures might be a lot smarter than we think, either individually, like Elvis, or collectively, such as ants, there’s this cat who showed a lack of capability in its calculations of distance.
Studies on the intelligence of cats versus dogs and their owners
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on July 20, 2016
It is a demonstrable fact that dogs know calculus as reported here by The Mathematical Association of America. On the other hand, everyone knows that cats, while obviously intelligent, are too lazy to learn any tricks like all dogs do, at least until they become too old. Therefore, for these two reasons, dogs must be smarter than cats by my reckoning.
But now comes news that felines fathom physics, or at least they naturally grasp the principles of gravity. This conclusion comes from an ingenious experiment on thirty cats done by Japanese researchers. The creatures were found to be inordinately curious about magnetic balls that did not fall out of an overturned metal container. For more details, see this recap by phys.org.
Then to make matters worse for dog lovers like myself, a recent study by a Wisconsin researcher indicates that cat owners are smarter than dog owners. Read it here in Psychology Today and whimper. If it’s any consolation, the study shows that dog people are less neurotic.
“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”
― Samuel Butler
Are dogs right-pawed or left?
Last week I judged a number of entrants in a 7th grade science fair. The one I liked the best investigated a number of dogs to see which paw they favored. This depended on which hand the student held out. When he held out his left hand, all dogs offered up their right paw. But when he held out his right hand, half of the canines shook it with their left paw. I conclude from this that far more dogs are lefties than humans, who favor their right hand by a ratio of 9-to-1. Based on what I read here in the Washington Post and see published on the internet, my guess is that dogs are split 50/50 left versus right. The same may be true for cats, although they might be slightly more likely to right-pawed according a study noted in the Post article.
Just for fun, test your pet by putting a snack just barely within their reach. Which paw do they put out? Make a note. Do it again a number of times. If you see what seems to be a significant bias to left or right, let me know.