Dog intelligence

For most of this year, during term times, I've had my two German Shepherds walked. A local dog walker, Lindsey, took them each out once a week - Logan on Wednesday morning, and Kefira on Thursday morning - at 8am.

The aim was to keep them nicely socialised with other dogs. And they did get very excited to go with Lindsey!

Anyway, being Scotland, the kids broke up for school at the beginning of July, and didn't go back to school this week. So no walkies with Lindsey.

However, I decided over the summer that we needed to cut back on the dog walking service for financial reasons.

So far, fairly ordinary.

Except that this morning, Kefira started getting really excited about 8am. She sat by the kitchen gate making the sort of loud excited noises that normally means she expects to go with Lindsey (Kefira is otherwise a quiet dog).

I told her to calm down, and certainly didn't mention anything about Lindsey or dog walking, and forgot about it.

Later on, when recounting this to my wife, it occurred to me - the kids went back to school this week on the Tuesday. If it had been a normal school week, then today would be Thursday.

The only conclusion I could make is that my dog could figure out that on the fourth day of a school week, she goes walkies with Lindsey. And that she could remember that, even after 6 weeks of school holidays.

My dog can count?!

But, apparently dogs have been tested for this ability, and have been shown to be capable of understanding numbers up to 5:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sci...-as-intelligent-as-two-year-old-children.html

Interesting observation.

I've had a few dogs, and intelligence varied a bit. (Border collie cross, border collie, mongrel [with some border collie]).

Training basic commands can be fun as well as useful, and for the previous hound I matched commands to a sign (so, a raised index finger for 'sit'). What I found interesting was that not only would he react to the sign as well as the word, he reacted more quickly and consistently to the sign.

An odd thing (I wasn't present for this) was when he was on a walk and encountered someone who normally had a dog (who had died a week or two earlier). Now, I know he'd met this woman without the dog before, but on this occasion he was apparently acting a little oddly, quite soft. My guess would be he noticed the absence of the other dog's smell, and realised he was gone.

As my last two dogs got gradually older they both started losing their hearing and, aware of this, I started using hand gestures alongside commands. In very little time, so long as I already had their attention, all I needed were the hand gestures.

Brian Turner said:

My dog can count?!

But, apparently dogs have been tested for this ability, and have been shown to be capable of understanding numbers up to 5:

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I'd be wary of defining it as intelligence. Also some of the experiments to test counting ability of cats and dogs are suspect. They probably can count higher numbers than the tests suggest.
"understanding numbers up to 5": Well, you can count without "understanding" numbers at all.

Undoubtedly some dogs are very "smart" indeed. Though it would be nice if we had a proper definition of "Intelligence" for ourselves.

Corvids can count well, common crow limit isn't clear. So seems very reasonable a Dog can count to more than 5, but may know the day of week from other clues, not by counting days.
Animals frequently don't do the same thing the way we do it and there is a huge temptation to assume the same methods are used for same results.

It's a fascinating subject.

It is. This is one reason I like nature/aminal documentaries so much. New stuff is discovered. Maybe we could devise a test. If we had, say, a dozen objects all the same, and we laid them out and let the dog have a look, could it retrieve all twelve from the deep grass if we threw them in there? Or something like that. I bet they can count differently somehow.

J Riff said:

could it retrieve all twelve from the deep grass if we threw them in there? Or something like that.

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Motivation can skew results. Perhaps dog will get fed up with it?

Only thinking out loud. The problem is how to "really" explain to the Dog / Cat / Horse / Crow what you want?

My dog can say his own name. It's whoof, whoof.

My parents had miniature Pinschers for a long time, and one of them, the "leader of the pack," was able to tell that it was a Wednesday and that in the afternoon my grandparents were due to visit - she'd wait on a chair at the appropriate time in view of the gate at the bottom of the drive. We've since concluded that she must have been picking up on subliminal clues that we were giving out on that particular day and time.

Not a dog but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

Shows that animals can indeed be smarter than we think, but that sometimes they pick up on things that we don't intend them to do and thus we can draw the wrong conclusions. Humans are, it seems, quite unobservant in many ways; we miss a lot of subtle clues in our physical language, despite having very good eyesight; whilst areas of sound, smell and taste we are very blind to.

So such studies are hard to conduct when there could be multiple triggers that the animals are picking up on and reacting to.

Further we have to understand what they are reacting to specifically to then understand their reaction and what it means.


Personally I've always felt that many animals are a lot smarter than we think; but that their lifestyle or habitat requires that intelligence in a different use and their upbringing also hones it toward a different focus than our own. Thus a result of the different lifestyle and thinking patterns that animals have.

I also think that a lot of domestic stock is typically quite stupid. That's not an insult, but it seems that the brighter, more wilful and harder to control animal traits are often bred out of many domestic lines; especially for many typical companion pet types. Most people don't want a smart animal; they want one easy to train, easy to control and which isn't going to get many ideas of its own. Thus when one compares a working breed to a domestic and then again to a wild I think there are many differences in intelligence present.

Of course this can be a false assumption; one could be very smart but lack the willpower or confidence to act upon such thoughts. Thus there's potential that my assumption is wrong and that its more a case that they do not exercise their intelligence rather than lacking it.

Finally there's the element of education - we like to call it training for animals - whereby animals are educated by each other and by us. It stands to reason that just like people, animals with less education will generally not be as potentially smart as those with a greater degree of education. Further a dog whose life is food and walkies might well lack significant experience in different situations to have built up a greater understanding and range of possible reactions and responses than those might might live a more wild or active life.

Education is it. A dog or cat can be a very dull beast if it's raised by troglodytes. Other dogs are full-on family members who know everybody's schedule, and will wake you if there's a fire.
They live faster than us, aminals do, so they don't like to waste time.
There's video of a hippo saving a deer from a crocodile. I think we should put out food for wild aminals, same's we do pets. It must be embarrassing for them to have to go around eating each other still, all these millions of years later. *

I saw a video of a croc jump out (as crocs do) at Hippo. Bad mistake. Did the croc even have time to think, "Oh no! Wrong animal!"
Also a friend warned a woman at a Safari place not to take her yappy annoying dog near the hippos or river walk. A hippo stopped the annoying yap.

J Riff said:

I think we should put out food for wild aminals,

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However the birds are messy eaters and the food they spill attracts rats even in broad daylight.

I'd be more sympathetic to rooks, rats, mice, wasps etc if they didn't keep trying to occupy my house. Well, the pair of nesting rooks were only alarming the few times one decided to explore rather than just nesting in the corner. They pecked a hole in weather board on gable end.

I had guinea pigs (cavies) in an outdoor run and that attracted rats. In winter when I moved them to paved patio the rats tunnelled along every seam of the paving slabs. We noticed when a huge pyramid of sand appeared in the flower bed. It took ages to repair.

I wonder if anyone has ever thought to research whether a man is a dog's best friend?

Gramm838 said:

I wonder if anyone has ever thought to research whether a man is a dog's best friend?

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Heh well there is a trap question in itself as without man there would be no dog in the first place. So man is very much dog's creator - best friend though is a hazy grey area though. For certain there are many happy pet and many happy working dogs in the world for which it is true; and many who are fighting, meal and experimental dogs who likely do not consider man their best friend (if they could comprehend their situation fully*(


There also genetic considerations; especially these days with so many designer breeds and so many bred to "conformation standards" which often results in exacerbation of features which can, once bred in, prove to be long term health problems. Things like breathing problems for many snub-nosed dogs; or hip problems for some breeds and other issues.


* its that old story that if you lock your wife in the boot of a car and a dog in another that when you let them both out your wife hates you and your dog loves you.

Odd that a dog's 'intelligence' should be measured in terms of human intelligence. I don't see how that could work at all, other than the dog always emerging as the dimmer of the two.

All dogs are stable 'geniuses' in the field they specialize in - being a dog. All cats are stable 'geniuses' at being cats. I can only think of one animal that this doesn't apply to; there are very clever ones, and there are very stupid ones, and then there are the ones that are twisted well beyond the norm for the species.

Try measuring human intelligence in dog terms. Small wonder they look at us oddly, and cats refuse to take us seriously - that vole/pigeon/sheep on the doorstep, generously donated by your cat, is a gift of food, as you are quite obviously hard of understanding and incapable of hunting for your own sustenance.

Ever tried explaining how a supermarket works to a cat?

.

Well, dogs are to a large extent a creation of mankind (as well as being man's best friend) so comparing the two isn't necessarily as daft as it might seem.

steelyglint said:

Try measuring human intelligence in dog terms. Small wonder they look at us oddly, and cats refuse to take us seriously - that vole/pigeon/sheep on the doorstep, generously donated by your cat, is a gift of food, as you are quite obviously hard of understanding and incapable of hunting for your own sustenance.

Ever tried explaining how a supermarket works to a cat?

.

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I'm sure dogs and cats look down on us as some dull creatures who are deaf, blind, sluggish in wit and motion, with a nose merely for decoration.