Quirks and Quarks6:31Some doggos can learn words simply by eavesdropping
One of the perks, and responsibilities, of having a dog is to play with them. Not only is it fun, but it’s one of the main ways they learn.
Dogs are social animals; they make sense of the world through visual clues and can sense emotions through scent. And they normally build up their vocabulary by interacting with their owners, usually picking up words that are meaningful to them: think “walk” or “fetch.”
But researchers have identified that a small number of dogs may be “gifted word learners,” meaning they can learn upwards of 100 words.
The study, published in the journal Science, explores the number of toys a dog can name — and it found that that number “seems to be endless, only bound by their owner’s patience and how much space they have in their house for toys,” Shany Dror, a post-doctoral researcher at E.L.T.E. University in Budapest and at the Veterinary University of Vienna, told Quirks & Quarks.
But she notes this is a very rare trait, saying the team found about 40 to 45 dogs with the ability to learn more than 100 words during a seven-year worldwide search. Those dogs could understand between 200 and 300 toy names, and she said previous studies found one dog that could understand over 1,000 words — again, all names of toys.
The skill is not breed-specific, Dror said, though the majority of the gifted dogs were Border Collies.
“We’ve seen breeds that were not bred to work with humans, for example, Pekingese, Shih Tzu. We’ve seen a few Yorkshire Terriers that are able to do this.”
Gifted dogs from Canada
One of those exceptional dogs is Miso, a seven-year-old Border Collie from Oshawa, Ont.
His owner, Veronica Suen, said that because Miso was her first dog, she wasn’t aware the pup’s intelligence was out of the ordinary.
“When he was a puppy, I’d be trying to do other things, but he would want to play all the time. So I would just, in my own lazy little way, be like, ‘Oh, can you bring me the ball? Can you get me the frisbee?’” she said. “And he would do it — and I, I didn’t think it was anything special.”
But then Suen came across Dror’s Genius Dog Challenge online, which included a callout for pups that could identify 10 or more toy names.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute, my dog can do way more than that.’”
Miso participated in four studies with Dror over several years. Suen said she now names each of his toys in a way that both she and Miso can remember. For example, a Pikachu doll is called “Pikachu,” and a toy that is shaped like a croissant is called “Croissant.”
Miso can understand at least 200 words; at this point, Suen said, she’s stopped counting.
Unlike the stereotypical Border Collie — known for exuberant and energetic personalities — Miso is quite serene.
“Miso, I think, is one of the few dogs that we’ve had that was always keeping his calm and always going and choosing his toys very carefully,” Dror said of his performance in the study.’
Suen said her other Border Collie, Mayu, is not like Miso at all — she’s high energy, athletic and “tries to chase cars, sadly.”
Then there’s Remi, a five-year-old mini goldendoodle from Pickering, Ont., who took part in the studies — and was Valerie Lo’s first pet.
“In the first week [at home] she was potty trained and she knew all her tricks … so I’m like, ‘Am I really good or is she really smart?’” Lo recalled.
Remi was a pandemic puppy, so Lo, a teacher, worked from home for most of their first two years together — and the dog showed early on that she could pick up words by eavesdropping on Lo’s virtual classes.
“I was teaching my students about shapes, and we were talking about triangles and circles. And Remy has a toy called ‘Triangle.’ And every time I said triangle, she’ll just come upstairs and bring me her triangle. And I’m like, ‘OK, that must be a coincidence.’”
Language tests
In Dror’s latest study, she worked with 14 gifted dogs.
In it, they tried to measure word recall, controlling for the fact that dogs are excellent at picking up visual cues from humans. So, toys were placed in a different room, and the dog was told to go select a specific toy while researchers waited to see if they picked the right one.
“I’ve been watching these dogs for many years and saw how attentive they are to their owners,” Dror said, noting she wasn’t surprised they could learn words just by eavesdropping. “And I’ve also had some owners tell me really funny stories of, for example, they were talking about ordering a pizza and the dog came into the room with the toy named Pizza.”
When her ‘beach’ word button was broken, Stella, “the world’s first talking dog,” found other words to describe what she wanted. Watch Can Dogs Talk? on CBC Gem.
However, she was surprised by how quickly and how well they learned; sometimes being able to identify a toy after overhearing it spoken about only four times.
“They had 100 per cent correct choices and they were really confident in what they were doing,” she said.”
This type of learning is akin to that of a toddler between 18 and 24 months old, the study suggests. But Dror says there is an important distinction between human development and that seen in dogs — dogs are learning words, not language.
“We cannot generalize from this very specific ability to learning language, because language is a very complex mechanism,” she said. “It’s not only the ability to understand that certain things have names, it’s also the way that these things interact with each other … So the fact that the dogs are performing the same way as the children does not mean that they’re thinking the same thoughts as the children.”
Even among humans, language development isn’t one-size-fits-all.– Andrea Breen
Though there’s been some research comparing the development of young children and dogs, previous studies have focused more on other markers such as attention, gaze and responsiveness, says Andrea Breen, an associate professor at the University of Guelph — but not language itself.
Though Dror’s study, which Breen did not participate in, found similar behaviours between children and dogs, it doesn’t mean that their brains learn or work in the same way, she said.
“Even though they are showing a behaviour that is, at the surface level, equivalent to what we see with kids, probably the thoughts that they have underneath are different, [the] learning mechanism is different,” said Breen, who is also director of the FIDO research lab that studies dog-human relationships.
Dogs learn best when it involves something meaningful to them, like the toys Dror used in her tests, Breen said.
“One of the things that I think is good to keep in mind is that the dogs in this sample were highly motivated by the objects in the test context — they were interested, they were paying attention, they wanted those toys.”
How to develop similar skills in your dog
The best way to help your dog learn is just to spend time with them, Breen says, because they are very social creatures.
“Do silly things that you enjoy with your dog — or don’t do anything at all. Just sit on the floor and pet your dog,” she said. “The dogs beside us aren’t going to do the things that these dogs[in the study] did, most likely, but they’re probably capable of a lot more than we give them credit for.”
