How Smart are Dogs?

We all like to think of our dogs as being two (or perhaps even one!) step removed from Einstein. Much of this is not mere pride -- dogs accomplish some pretty remarkable things, and can be trained to do tasks both astonishing and profoundly useful.

This past week, the New York Times took a look at one such furry friend named Jet. If you don't feel inadequate after reading this, well, you're probably more interesting than the two of us:

He is both a seizure alert dog and a psychiatric service dog whose owner has epilepsy, severe anxiety, depression, various phobias and hypoglycemia. Jet has been trained to anticipate seizures, panic attacks and plunging blood sugar and will alert his owner to these things by staring intently at her until she does something about the problem. He will drop a toy in her lap to snap her out of a dissociative state. If she has a seizure, he will position himself so that his body is under her head to cushion a fall.

Sounds pretty amazing, eh? You're not the only one who is impressed:

In September, the Army announced that it would spend $300,000 to study the impact of pairing psychiatric service dogs like Jet with soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder. Both the House and Senate have recently passed bills that would finance the training and placement of these dogs with veterans.

Well, here's the rub: are these dogs aware of what they're doing? Are they "thinking" or are they merely responding in conditioned ways to certain stimuli (the way, for example, Jill does when she is near a french fry).

One researcher at the University of British Colombia has attempted to figure this out, by giving dogs language tests and other intelligence exams meant for toddlers. Based on that, he has categorized different dogs by how many commands they can learn. Shadow, Jill's dog, will be pleased to know that Poodles are one of the smartest dogs according to this researcher. Another researcher, however, at the University of Florida, argues that dogs are simply deeply sensitive to the human beings around them, and that through conditioning they can effectively mimic the traits of human thought.

We're not sure of the truth. But we challenge anyone to deny that Zeke, Billy's Portuguese Water Dog, is not interested in the latest developments in fluid dynamics....

Dogs Outsmart Kids

Check out this article from livescience.com.

Stanley Coren, a canine expert and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia has made it official: dogs are as smart as a 2 year old human when comparing language skills. Coren posits that Border Collies, Poodles and German Shepherds (in that order) are on par with a 2 and half year old. Even more interesting, dogs would outsmart a 3 or 4 year old in basic arithmetic.

Coren also reports that dogs are socially more adept than human toddlers too: "the social life of dogs is much more complex, much more like human teenagers at that stage, interested in who is moving up in the pack and who is sleeping with who and that sort of thing."

Interestingly, older breeds such as hounds and some hunting dogs scored lower on the intelligence tests. More recently introduced breeds score higher. Coren believes that there's a "high probability that we've been breeding dogs so they're more responsive to human beings and human signals."

Even with all this good news, Shadow, Jill's Poodle, is frustrated because he's been unable to type up an email to Mr. Coren outlining his objections to being ranked second. He's been muttering darkly about "opposable thumbs."