Dogs As Smart As Toddlers

The study points to border collies as the Most Trainable breed.

It is not a measure of intellect. It is a measure of obedience.

There, Briannana! :) Fixed that cat hate for you, I hope!

I'm finding it hard to take this seriously without a link to the original study. One could base an entire thesis and then some around the subject, but all we have are newspaper articles written by laymen.

Why I want to take this so seriously is unknown. Perhaps because I'm an advocate for canines.

Eh...as smart as 2 year olds doesn't exactly make them Rhodes scholars.

social skills of teenagers.... yeah i believe that

Mine isn't. I THOUGHT she was smart but there's no way she knows 165 words. I think there's got to be more to it than this.

I tried to "fake" throwing a ball past my 18 month old son tonight. It didn't work. He turned to me with a look like "what on earth are you trying to do, Mom? It's still in your hands." I have yet to meet a dog that doesn't fall for it.

I had a border collie, and she was very bright, knew at least 25 different words. But she, too was a sucker for the fake throw. RIP Heidi.

In related news, toddlers are as stupid as dogs.

lol

I think, dogs are even more intelligent than 2 years old children.

Dogs can understand our feelings than a 2 year old child.

When I go to the dog park, my dog runs around like mad, humps all the other dogs until their owner gets pissed off, eats any available food then refuses to come when it's time to go home.

So I would agree with the "social skills of teenagers" bit.

Lets send them to public school. That will teach the smart out of them in no time.

According to a tv interview with the researcher, Stanley Coren (who used to have a show called "Good Dog"!),he said it was 165 words and gestures.
My dog didn't know what the word "lipstick" meant, but he used to whine every time he saw me put it on, because he knew it meant I was going out.

Hmmm...interesting.
But are they as smart as cats?

Yeah, too bad so many of them are home-schooled.

Let it be known: Briannana does not actually hate cats. In fact, he loves all animals, and is practically the St. Frances of his day.
That said, I'm not a huge fan of comparing animal intellect to human intellect. It's like when the study came out saying that chimps had the intelligence of a 2-year old. No, they don't. There are completely different neurological and psychological processes going on in a human than any other animal. That said, I respect the intelligence of other animals and think they are more developed than a lot of people give them credit for. Just not quite like humans.

St. Francis. It's early on the west coast and I haven't had any coffee after 5 hours of sleep.

Hmm, some dog breeds are smarter than others?

Could intelligence be genetic? Could it be distributed unevenly in human populations?

What are the implications of this for humans?

In some ways dogs are more intelligent. They can be toilet-trained WAY before humans can!

There is no way that a dog is as smart as a two-year-old child. Sure, if you say "ball!" to a dog, it might go get its ball. In that sense, a dog can understand a lot of words and phrases. But there are many problems with this.

First of all, a dog's understanding is highly based on tone of voice and body language. If you glared at your dog and said "good girl!" angrily, she would probably whimper in shame. A two-year-old would look at you as if you were crazy... why would you be calling her good if you sounded angry?

Secondly, there are many things a dog cannot grasp. For example, you cannot ask a dog, "Can you please put away your toys?" Unless you trained the dog to respond specifically to this phrase, it could never understand what you meant, especially if you said it in a slightly different way than what it was used to (e.g. "Put away your toys now.") The human mind is capable of linguistic creativity, something a dog is absolutely NOT capable of. There are a vast number of things that a dog would never understand, for example, getting in someone's way or hurting their feelings.

Sorry, Briannana.

You're going to have to do much more than that to prove your non-hatred of cats. You will have to post nothing but positive comments at the next cute five cute kitten videos posted here. If you include the words "I can has" or "lolz", your sentence can be reduced to four comments.

Can two year olds learn to independantly negotiate the subways like some stray-dogs do...?

I think it can depend on the relationship with the owner though. I have a border collie. She's quick to learn everything but she's also very independent minded so sometimes she just doesn't feel like it. Sometimes I'll say, "oh you know what I am saying so stop being lazy" and she'll do what I asked without me saying another word. She can count to four, pick out colors, listen to what I'm saying without calling commands (I talk to her in a regular manner and she responds better that way), and hula dance (ha ha...ok that's just me being silly playing with my dog as she's standing on two legs and hopping around). But she also ate a doorway, chewed through lip stick when there were cookies on the table, almost ran after a car chasing the wheels...and if she hears a door bell noise that isn't even coming from the doorbell...she still barks and runs looking for a door. Eh...still I love this dog! Ha!

However, I think some dogs just have great relationships with their owners despite breed. They can show the same level of intelligence as so called smart dogs. I also think if the owner changes their lifestyle...the dog will either adjust after a while or become bored and destructive.

@pad2: "Dogs can understand our feelings than a 2 year old child."

Oddly enough, my 2 year old child can construct a better sentence than that.

Very True & Interesting.