Dogs are People Too

[shipperx]

Don't tell me that my baby isn't smart. She is smart.  (But she thinks her name is 'baby' because I call her that so often...).










I discovered last night that she knows the word 'belly.' Misinterprets its meaning, but apparently I've praised her little white belly while scratching it enough times that she now thinks "belly!" is the equivalent of 'roll over.' She flops down and exposes her tummy when I say it.

Anyway, an article on dog intelligence from i09. The one question I have is... have they met many 16 year olds? Because I think a case could be made for dogs being smarter than some 16 year olds. [/snark]

(In actuality, I thought the cognition of dogs was estimated to be that of a toddler, so I'm thinking 1-3)

Er... I digressed. The I09 article:

We love to brag about the intelligence of our canine companions. But a recent survey suggests that many of us are grossly overestimating the cognitive capacities of our dogs — and that our emotional attachment to them has a lot to do with it.

Realizing that few studies have examined people's perceptions of specific cognitive abilities in dogs, researcher Tiffani J. Howell and her team developed an online questionnaire and analyzed the results from over 560 dog owners. The ensuing study appeared last year in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior.

Results showed that most dog owners generally believe their dogs are socially intelligent and possess the capacity to learn social and general cognitive skills. About 25% of dog owners agreed or strongly agreed that dogs were smarter than most people. Nearly half (45.7%) believed that their dog's mental ability is equal to "3-5 year old human children."

Astoundingly, one in every 20 dog owners believe that dogs have the mental ability of humans who are 16 years of age or older.

Not surprisingly, and in the words of the researchers: "Perceived emotional owner-dog closeness correlated with all cognition ratings." In other words, the closer you are to your dog, the more intelligent you think he or she is.

So how do these assessments of dog owners compare to the actual scientific data on the mental abilities of dogs? Writing in Psychology Today, dog expert Stanley Coren explains:

So how do these judgments of dog owners compare to the actual scientific data on the mental abilities of dogs? Well, dog owners feel that their pets can judge human emotions and there is a lot of data which shows that they are right about this (click here or here for examples). Dog owners feel that their dogs can learn to solve problems, often by just observing the behavior of humans or other dogs who know the solution and again they are right about this (click here for an example). However, when it comes to comparing the equivalent mental abilities of dogs to that of humans of various ages, it appears that the dog owners tend to overestimate the cognitive ability of dogs relative to what the scientific data seems to be showing us. The research findings are that dogs' mental abilities are most similar to that of human children between the age of two and three (click here for an example). In the current study the dog owners most commonly placed the intelligence of dogs in the 3 to 5-year-old human range and nearly 25 percent of them rated it a lot higher than that.

So dogs may be smart, says Coren, but perhaps not as smart as we seem to perceive them to be.

Comments

[rahirah]

I'd always heard the dogs = 2-3 year old myself. Bo's smart for a dog, but he's not going to be taking the SATs any time soon.

[molliemole.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere (can't recall where) that German Shepherds are the most intelligent dogs, and their IQ's are the equivalent of 12-yr-old humans.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I thought it was border collies. German Shepherds are right up there and are extremely intelligent.

The book 'Genius of Dogs' ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Genius-Dogs-Smarter-Think/dp/0525953191 ) is actually interesting as it views it as there being several kinds of intelligence. In some aspects dogs are not smart at all. In others they truly excel.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the breed - and on the individual dog. I've met some brilliant dogs and some idiots.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The guy who wrote "Dog Genius" who did cognitive studies said that there's more verifiable difference between individuals than between breeds.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I did like the book The Genius of Dogs where he basically factored it out saying that there are various forms of intelligence. Dogs have had tens of thousands of years to adapt to remarkably close association with humans, so in certain areas Dogs are uniquely well adapted and are very, very good at those things. Better than most/any other species. But... they also have areas where there are definitely other animals/birds who are smarter at certain things.

Joking aside, dogs actually aren't people. They're dogs. But there's a reason they're companion animals. They excel in certain capacities.

And I don't think anyone who has ever owned a dog and been close to them doubts that they have emotions. They definitely have emotions.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Great article, thanks! 2-3 sounds about right for most dogs I've known. Taking into account that a 2-year-old child is pretty damn smart already by mammal standards - they may not have the knowledge, language and the social ability that we mostly judge intelligence by, but it's not like humans only switch on their brains at age 12.

ETA: I watched a documentary a few years ago that claimed one of the chief differences between wolves and dogs is the difference in how they use their intelligence. Dogs have been conditioned and bred to adapt to human behaviour for so long, that their thinking is closer to ours. For good and bad; for instance, a wolf finding himself trapped by a human will keep trying to find ways to escape, while a dog will sooner or later give up and trust that a human will help it out.