Tim Dowling speaks to three of the leading dog cognition experts in the world to learn all about dog intelligence. He attempts to find out how smart are dogs compared to other animals? How smart are the worlds smartest dogs? And how smart is his dog?
Tim Dowling speaks to three of the leading dog cognition experts in the world to learn all about dog intelligence. He attempts to find out how smart are dogs compared to other animals? How smart are the worlds smartest dogs? And how smart is his dog?
Welcome to Insult My Intelligence with me, Tim Dowling. This is the podcast where I dare to ask smart people dumb questions about some of the things I've never really understood openly and without embarrassment. Well, with embarrassment, and then we edit the embarrassment out, because otherwise it would take too long. This is the first episode of Insult My Intelligence. And the first topic we're going to explore is dogs. The question we're asking today is how smarter dogs really? And by that, I mean, how smart is my dog? And by that, I think I mean, how stupid is my dog? Also, how smarter dogs compared to other animals? And how smart are some of the smartest dogs in the world, of which I'm pretty certain my dog is not one. To get these answers. I spoke to three of the leading dog cognition experts in the world. And I also put my dog Nellie through some intelligence testing. We'll have those results later. The first chat I had was with husband and wife, dog research team and authors of the Genius of Dogs, Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare, as befits a cohabiting pair of canine cognition experts, they have a very, very smart dog.
Vanessa Woods:Well, we have a really smart dog who is retired service dog. He's from Canine Companions for Independence. So he used to know like 50 commands, you could do your laundry. He still but he doesn't do them because he's so he's so smart. He doesn't do anything anymore.
Brian Hare:He's like, I'm not doing this anymore. It's a lot of work.
Tim Dowling:I also spoke to Dr. Adam Miklosi, a Hungarian researcher who set up something called the Family Dog Project.
Adam Miklosi:I never had a dog and I still not have one. So for me to see like jumping into a darkroom without any preparations.
Tim Dowling:Miklosi has a claim to be one of the first to study dog cognition back in the 1990s.
Adam Miklosi:By the way, that was not my decision not that not at the beginning, I was sort of told to do that. Because before that I was actually working on fish behaviour, specifically on anti-predatory fish behaviours. But at some point, my professor at the time decided that we should change topic and research interests. And so one of his suggestion was to study dogs. And then I was sort of a thinking a little bit, no, and I thought to be quite challenging to study them. So I decided to be a dog researcher, just basically overnight.
Tim Dowling:Brian Hare's introduction to the study of canine cognition was in its own way, just as accidental.
Brian Hare:I was an undergraduate, and I was working with great apes, and we were studying how great apes struggled to understand gestural communication of humans. And so my advisor, undergraduate advisor, who's leading the research, Mike Tomasello, said, I think this is something unique to humans, only humans can understand gestures this way. And I said, stupidly, as a 19 year old who didn't know better to not, you know, tell a preeminent expert. I said, well, I think my dog does that. And that's how it all started. And he thought that was really exciting suggestion. And it ended up that dogs are really good at this thing that great apes struggle with as smart as great apes are. And it launched a whole area of research and my own career in a direction I never would have anticipated and it was all because of my pet dog growing up.
Tim Dowling:What the chimps were struggling with was pointing. When they were shown hidden objects by humans pointing at them they didn't understand what the gestures stood for. Hare went home to his dog Oreo and conducted a similar test in his parent's garage. He hid treats under one of two cups, and pointed. Oreo clearly understood what the gesture meant without being trained, and so did a lot of other dogs. Not my dog, though. My dog, Nelly, like the chimps doesn't really get it. Vanessa woods and Brian hare wrote a book called The Genius of Dogs. I wanted them to explain what they mean by dog genius.
Brian Hare:If you take a big picture and you say, you know, what is success in life and which species have been, you know, really successful, especially since humans have spread across the planet, dogs really stand out. There's one estimate is there over a billion dogs on the planet now. And meanwhile, wolves, which is the species they evolved from, are endangered everywhere they're found. So then the question is, well, how did dogs become so successful? And what is it about their evolution that allowed them to do this. And whatever that is that must be their genius, and connecting the origin of my research in dogs and that question, we think it is that it's dogs unusual ability to understand us to read our intentions what we want, or we don't want, they gave them a leg up. And in addition to their total endless friendliness towards us, I think that's what allowed them to win.
Tim Dowling:Adam Miklosi has been studying family dogs for decades, and some of his research has yielded interesting results on the emotional capability of dogs. And one of the things that struck me also within a lot of people want to read into dogs, a lot of different emotions. And a lot of people think, you know, you see this on, on YouTube and Twitter all the time, you see people whose dogs looking guilty, and my understanding is the dogs don't really feel guilty, they're just listening to, they're just being caught. And they're listening to your tone. And they're sort of cowering because they can see that you're angry.
Adam Miklosi:Animals must have emotions. So so this is not a question whether they have or don't have emotion is sort of a process that takes place in in brains and minds. And the more complicated the mind is, the more complicated emotions you might expect. That's one important thing. So based on this, dogs can have an emotion which we describe, and that's important that we describe as emotion that dogs might also have something similar, like, being happy, being sad, feeling fear, and, and such aspects. Now, the emotions that you've mentioned, I mean, guilt, these are very complicated one. But we, there's an easier emotion, I mean, easier to understand, than jealousy. Jealousy is also a complicated emotion, because it is not regarded as a basic emotion. But jealousy is about or somebody fears jealousy, I put it this way, when you when you think that some of your important social relationships is threatened by somebody else. So then you feel jealous, and then you show it in certain behaviour strategies, you've tried to separate those others and, and get the attention to again. So it's actually involves quite a lot of strategic thinking how to solve this problem, why you are feeling this jealous emotion. Now, guilt is even a more complicated one, we did some experiments, we couldn't really find very strong evidence for that emotion. And we also suggest that it's probably more something that is sort of, to put it short, fear from punishment, in some ways that makes them showing this behaviour. Now, however, what we also found that this is interesting that dogs who are who are showing something that we might call guilt, they don't get so much punishment. So actually, it's a good strategy for my dog to act as if they have good, whether they have good or not, maybe a property never find out. But this may be a pessimistic comment now let's see.
Tim Dowling:Today, I caught our dog just this morning, eating the food out of the cat's bowl. And I got very, very close before she discovered me and what the results looked a lot like guilt. I mean, she jumped off the table very, very quickly. But I can see that that I have sort of trained that, you know, obviously, if he looks guilty enough, you're right. I don't punish her. But you did a study on jealousy and dogs do get jealous, don't they?
Adam Miklosi:Yes, they do get jealous. So this is what I mentioned, this is a typical emotion. But just like in humans, not everybody's always jealous, because we humans are also different. So this is also part of a personality issue, some people are more jealous, or more likely to be jealous than others. And this is also the case in dogs. So some dogs, for some reason don't really care about a social relationship so much compared to others. And also that's is a problem because obviously, we have to do all these experiments under controlled conditions. And you can't just tell it, okay, now show jealousy, you know, right, because I have 10 minutes to record your behaviour. So it's really complicated to put those dogs who actually are reported to be jealous by the owners into a situation where there's a chance that at least they you know show some evidence or some behaviour evidence for for jealousy.
Tim Dowling:How do I mean what, how do you go about that?
Adam Miklosi:So what we basically did was, the dog came to our lab, we knew at least we hope that it will be jealous. So he was also coming with another dog from the household. And so we asked the owner, let's interact with the other dog and we observed the focus of whether it showed the jealous behaviour which we had defined as getting the attention of the owner trying to separate the interacting parties and and many other aspects of behaviour so that the dog show these behaviour features more often in if there was another dog present, then when the owner was doing some other stuff. And this was one indication for us. I mean, you could come with up with other ideas, but it was the other indication for us that, yes, jealousy exists in dogs, and this is a general emotional state of them.
Tim Dowling:So dogs have an ability to emotionally manipulate humans to get what they want. But how does their overall intelligence compared to other animals like primates and dolphins?
Brian Hare:When I was telling you sort of the dogs have a genius that sort of at the species level, but of course, within the species, there's a lot of individual variability. And I get asked all the time, sort of like, is the dogs smarter than a chimpanzee, etc? And I always say, that's a really hard question, because it's like asking me is a screwdriver a better tool than a hammer? Well, you know, what's the problem you're trying to solve? You know, if it's a dolphin versus a chimpanzee, you know, chimp, chimpanzees aren't gonna do very good catching a fish. And, you know, dolphin can't get fruit out of a tree. So it really, it really just depends. And so with dogs that it seems like, there's sort of toolkit that makes them successful is this social ability.
Adam Miklosi:Obviously, each species is very different. So when you are looking for a biological perspective, you should assume that a species is more or less prepared for living in that particular environment in which they are found. So both are prepared for, you know, living in the forest or prepared for being social hunters prepared for maintaining a huge territory, and all that. Now, dogs are prepared during the domestication history for living with humans. So they have skills, cognitive skills, that help them, to actually get into interaction with humans, communicate with humans cooperate with humans and all that things. So whether this is something more complicated or more complex or less complex than what wolves have, it's very difficult to decide because as you said, it's difficult to quantify them. So actually, these comparative experiments are always tricky, because people really like to get some results like in sport, you know, who is better than the other. Now, this is what I really try to avoid. This is not a competition between species.
Tim Dowling:Okay, so no one wants to say if dogs are smarter than monkeys or pigeons, but there does seem to be a way of answering the other question, how smart is my dog? All three of our guests today are involved in a website called Dognition that allows dog owners to put their dog through 20 or so simple games and log the results. The site will then give you a profile of your dog and show you how they performed against other dogs. So I had to put Nelly through some tests. Vanessa, you're both of your co founders of something called Dognition. Can you explain to me what Dognition is?
Vanessa Woods:Sure. So the research that we do at the Duke Canine Cognition Centre is just it's basically asking dogs questions, and they're super simple. And we thought they were really fun. And we kept having all these trainers and other dog people saying what because you can really understand a lot about how a dog's mind works just by asking them questions in the way you'd ask, like a child that can't talk yet. And so there's just these choice paradigms that really sort of see what kind of part of their minds that they're using, where they lean in terms of different cognitive abilities. And so we developed this website where people can go on and play the same kind of games with their dogs and find out about how their dogs minds work.
Tim Dowling:We signed on yesterday with our dog.
Vanessa Woods:What's your dog's name?
Tim Dowling:She's called Nellie.
Vanessa Woods:How did Nellie do?
Tim Dowling:It was it was a mixed bag I would say. It's not a question of how well she did in dog school, it's more like she got a letter that basically said we have many highly competitive you know candidates, you wouldn't be coming this autumn. She was, we began with the sort of that we just did the assessment and we started with the yawn test. I don't think either of us understood that test. I but I did my bit right. And she she didn't she didn't do anything. But I think one of the problems we had with Nellie was she is if anything way to engage with the whole thing. I mean, in the second test, which was off the charts, was just the one where you maintain eye contact eye contact, right you do that should be that for I mean, 90 seconds was fine, she'd do a day.
Brian Hare:Wow.
Tim Dowling:But that means that when when trying to do the yawn thing or any other thing he is still staring at me, Yeah, exactly.
Vanessa Woods:So the yawn and eye contact test, they were both measures of empathy. So actually very few dogs yawn in response to your yawning there was one researcher, the idea is that basically, you know, empathy is you feeling what somebody else feels. So when you yawn, and when you read about yawning, and when somebody who care about yawns and you just feel is over, I mean, I'm just dying to feel like I want to yawn right now. And the idea is that, um, you know, you have this kind of emotional transference. And so if Nelly, were to yawn while you were yawning, it's kind of she would be experiencing the same thing. But I think we found when we analyse the data that very few dogs actually did that. Really, yeah, it was really rare. But the eye contact is so interesting, because what happens with parents and their infants, I mean, you remember having babies, when they cry all the time, like, you know, they don't really, they don't bring anything to the party, they're just crying. I'm just like, work, work, work, work work. And so you know, and they're so helpless, like, you put them down for like a minute, and they almost like roll off something and try and kill themselves. So it's like they need to elicit this constant care from you. And the way they do that is with eye contact. And what happens is babies stare at their parents, that kind of increases the oxytocin, it's called the hug hormone. It does a lot of things. But one of the things it does is that it's responsible for feelings of bonding and attachment. So when your baby stares at you, your oxytocin goes up, and then you stare at your baby, and then your baby oxytocin goes up, and it creates this beautiful loop that sort of elicit caregiving and attention with babies can't really do much except for cry. And so what dogs have done is they've actually hijacked this loop. And so I'm not sure if you've ever seen Nellie just staring at you. And you're like, what do you want? You need to go to the bathroom, you want something he like, and she's just sitting there staring at you. And what she's doing is that she's trying to start that oxytocin loop because they found that in dogs, the same thing happens. So their oxytocin goes up, your oxytocin goes up, and they found all these really cool, cool, sort of like things that happen, you know, owners whose dogs stare at them for longer report having like a stronger relationship. And it, it's incredible that a completely different species has hijacked this mechanism that you know, is because essentially, for our infants.
Tim Dowling:That was about as well as she did, I'm afraid. We, the next thing we tried was the thing with the post-it notes. And about a bag and a half of dog treats went. And we tried to get it to go to you know, to the left and the right, based on very, I mean to just to explain this to listeners, the idea is that there are three post it notes on the ground, so you haven't left and right channel essentially set up between you and the dog. And you put, you start by putting treats either side and the dog, you know, unless, you know, your dog is a moron, your dog will go down the side where the treat is. So when you put and I'm not saying my dog is a moron, but um,
Brian Hare:We wouldnt say that bout Nelly, I haven't even mether but it cannot be true.
Tim Dowling:She, but when she that eventually put two treats down at once. So there's a left and a right channel option. And you point to one, and the idea is to see whether the dog will take cues from you. And Nellie, unfortunately went left 12 times running.
Vanessa Woods:She has a side bias, thats valid, that's completely valid.
Brian Hare:It does mean she didn't get it though.
Vanessa Woods:Not really paying attention to anything.
Tim Dowling:Pointing with the feet didn't help, nothing. Oh, nothing else. And she always once she figured out that she could always just snaffle up the right one after she'd eaten the left one.
Vanessa Woods:You're supposed to take it up.
Brian Hare:No, no, no, in that testyou don't no, no wrong answers. No.
Tim Dowling:I started taking them up about halfway through just because we're gonna run out otherwise. What else do we do? We did the thing where you then sort of hold the dog back and that this actually had sort of interesting mixed results, I think because you say no, or whatever you use for no. Leave it's one of those things. And then you let the dog go. And it's question of how long the dog will wait befor it goes ahead. And and I think the first time she just completely ignored me. And then the second time maybe it was something to do with the way I said it. I just put a little more behind it. She waited and she would have waited all day, I think until we let you know she just wasn't she wasn't gonna move.
Brian Hare:She needed to know you were serious.
Tim Dowling:Yeah, maybe maybe I just there's a voice a way of using my voice that I didn't use the first time. I guess one of the questions we had was whether if we kept doing this, the dog would get better at it and if training, if they can improve their score, does that mean that this is about training as opposed to some kind of inherent intelligence?
Brian Hare:Yes. So we're really most interested in the first measures and there's spontaneous performance. And for sure, you can shape response and all these things with different experience. But that's why, you know, it may have felt like it took forever. But but it actually is. And y'all really invested I'm impressed. A+ to you guys, but it's actually very few measurements, from a scientific perspective is, you know, four or five times in the key test trials. And so the idea is, let's look at the very first attempt at this and see what their spontaneous reaction is. And so yes, if you kept going, you could shape and see different reactions, for sure.
Tim Dowling:I mean, obviously, different breeds probably have different levels of intelligence, although they're so specialised that that's, I mean, it's bred into them. That's what they, that's what they're meant to be.
Brian Hare:Yeah. So so what we found with dogs, we had 1000s of people play these games. And one of the things we found is we did the games you describe, for instance, you described empathy and the communication games, that and sorry, the cunning game two, so three of the five, there were a couple more memory, and then there's inferential reasoning. So it ends up that the individual variability within each of those games is independent of one another. So that's a complex way, maybe to say, if you're a dog, and you're good at English, you're good at writing English prose, but it doesn't predict you're good at math. If you're good at math problems, it doesn't predict that you're good at English. And so if you if you are kind of remarkable on the empathy games, it doesn't mean that you are going to be communication games, or memory, etc. And so what we found was it different breeds really have different profiles, different individual dogs have different profiles across these different measures. And so it's really hard to say that one breed is the smart breed. Yeah, so for instance, we have some data that, you know, Staffy Terriers, Pit Bulls were really best at at memory games. Springer Spaniels, were best at the communication games. I could keep going. So it wasn't that Border Collies nowhere to be seen in the top five, German Shepherds, not their Labrador Retrievers not there. So it sort of defies expectations, once you collect the data, and you realise these things vary independently across different dogs. And then the but the one that I can say, that's easy to remember, is on that game where you ask the dog not to take the food. We found that small dogs were the most cunning and the most disobedient. So larger dogs, were actually the most obedient and generally would just sit there and not take the food when you told them not to. So they would remember the command not do it, and they would not do it, they were more likely not to do it in all the different conditions, whether your back was turned or not small dogs were specifically quicker to go get the food when your back was turned, or your eyes were closed. So they are definitely, you know, using their size against us, I guess.
Tim Dowling:Is it true that, this is the kind of thing that people always say, I certainly always say, that mutts are have a sort of are more intelligent than purebred dogs? I mean, everybody would say a man is smarter than a Labrador, I think.
Brian Hare:Yeah, I mean, I don't I think there's so much individual variability, that it's actually really difficult to say, and it depends on what measure we're talking about. Um, so I actually think that, um, you know, we could probably cluster different mutts, and it would depend on what, what their origin and what their makeup was, you know, where they would fall, but it actually ends up I know, that's a really disappointing answer, because I'm saying it's complicated. But I don't think you can just say mutts are smarter, purebreds are smarter. It really depends on the measure and what we're talking about and who you're comparing them to.
Tim Dowling:Okay, so I have an Nelly's report here from Dognition. At Dognition, they break the dogs down into categories, such as Ace expert, Renaissance dog, Einstein, Nelly's category is Socialite. It's actually a huge, it's like a 16 page report. But I think I've had a look. And I think if we just stick to the good news, it won't take very long to get through. The good news is empathy Nelly's empathy scores were off the charts. This is even more special because initial results suggest that small dogs like Nelly tend to be more individualistic than large dogs. So nearly certainly stands out from the small dog crowd. And she's also very good at bonding, and she's quite impulsive. And that's pretty much the end of the good news. Summing her up, it says, although Nellie is not as adapted, independent problem solving skills as other dogs, you got that right. Don't jump to any conclusions about her intelligence. Nelly relies on a very specific strategy using you and other humans in her pack to get what she wants. Yeah, it's pretty unattractive, isn't it? Clearly, Nellie is no genius. She isn't the best representative for the dog species. I asked Adam Miklosi about some of the smartest dogs he's ever come across.
Adam Miklosi:We had this single dog Whiskey, which was a Norwegian Border Collie, by the way. And Whiskey was not was is able seem to be able to actually have some knowledge on categories. But the owner of Whiskey who was a journalist and had no idea from dog training, nothing, he simply played with this dog. So Whuiskey actually is a dog who knows about 100 object names. And the object names are like, you know, big balls, small ball, red ball, long ropes, and short rope and all that. So this means that this gave us the opportunity to test wheter Whiskey has also some knowledge about categories. Our question was basically that during this totally spontaneous interactions, we have there was no intention that Whiskey actually learns categories or the concept of categories in terms of toys, whether he could actually do that. So we introduced some new toys that belong to the same category. So we had balls and ropes and and frisbees, and, and so on. And it turned actually out that yes, even if when the event that Whiskey has seen a new frisbee for the first time, among a new rope and the new ball, then he could or he could actually get that or she could actually get that object if he asked for a rope or a ball. So basically he and and this was the first time in his life, so he could recognise the similarity of I don't know red frisbee, to frisbees in general. And, and that was, that's very interesting, because this suggests, I mean, obviously, it's one dog in one series of experiments that it's really possible that even in animal mind, without relying on language,and without massive laboratory training, the mind of an animal can come up with a representation that is sort of equivalent to what we call a category.
Tim Dowling:Also somebody somebody bought Whiskey over 50 toys. I mean, that's, that's a lot my dog has one toy at a time, it destroys the toy, we give it a new toy, I mean, 50 toys is
Adam Miklosi:But actually 50 is not the I mean, I so at that time, it was 50. Now whiskey is close to 100. And, and we are not we don't have the, I think the world champion was Chaser is an American Border Collie and he knew about more than 1000 objects. So we are not going for the world record by the way, rather, going for more.
Tim Dowling:I've heard of these dogs, they come up again, again, Chaser and Rico.
Adam Miklosi:Yes, yes they knew more toys, more toys for us, it's more interesting to having more dogs at the same time. So now our special dog population consists of about 20 dogs, and they know about 50 or 20, 50, 70. But actually just a very recent, we had this social media event challenging dogs live on learning objects labour is and it turned out that they can learn I think about six objects per week. So you know, I mean, if somebody has a lot of time, you can you can try to have a new world record, but well, let's see.
Tim Dowling:So, how smart is my dog? Ultimately, she's some way of genius. She'll never be a Rico or a Chaser able to learn hundreds or even thousands of words, but they probably wouldn't be able to stare unnervingly into my eyes for minutes at a stretch. On a general IQ scale we can't compare dogs to other animals. Because when we talk about dog intelligence, we're not talking about maths or spatial awareness or sorry Nelly, the ability to follow simple commands, we're talking about emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manipulate human emotions, which is the secret to their survival. This is their special genius. They're better at this than any animal, their only real rivals are human babies. Oh, and one final thing. I don't know whether this means that my dog is smart, or dumb. It's just a question is why is my dog friends with a fox?
Vanessa Woods:Your dog is friends with a fox?
Tim Dowling:Yeah, that's not normal, is it?
Vanessa Woods:No, it's wonderful, very friendly. Wait. So what happens you just goes out. There's a fox that comes at nighttime, and she plays with them?
Tim Dowling:Behind that behind our garden. There's basically a sort of parking lot. And there's a long lane that runs down the side of our garden. If you let the dog out the front at night, or if you just open the front door, the dog runs out front door, and goes around the corner, where there is invariably a fox waiting, and she chases the fox in circles around the parking lot until she gets tired. And then she comes back. And when she by the time she's halfway back up the lane, the fox has come back after her coming back for more.
Vanessa Woods:Oh my gosh! You need to video that that is amazing. But so the interesting thing is that, you know, domestication doesn't necessarily happen with one species. And there's all this evidence, especially in the English Foxes, that they're becoming domesticated. They're super friendly. They're in all the, I think I saw like a picture of a fox at like an ATM like just standing in line. And so they have these like different so so you know, the process of domestication is happening in all these animals in America is probably coyotes. But they have these different colorations they're much less afraid of people. They're really becoming populous in urban areas. So maybe Nellie just thinks that she's just, you know, a dog that needs a little work.
Tim Dowling:Now the fox, now the fox weights under the streetlight for nobody to come out, you just see. I think they're adolescent. I don't know.
Brian Hare:That would make the most sense if they were adolescent. But it is true. What Vanessa is saying that there is data from the UK saying that, more urban foxes are attracted and more likely to approach and interact with humans and human artefacts and their pets. And so one prediction is you're going to start seeing morphological traits start changing and in the city foxes compared to rural living foxes. So, but this of course, gives any epidemiologist or you know, anybody who studies zoonosis you know, heart palpitations. You know, we've got all these friendly foxes that aren't vaccinated interacting with our dogs.
Tim Dowling:Yeah, well, during during the pandemic, between the first wave of lockdown when nobody was really supposed to be outside. If you went out to the shops, I mean, you just see foxes walking around like commuters. I'm not I know, I'm not supposed to be here, but you're not supposed to be here either. Thank you for listening to the first episode of Insult My Intelligence. Next week, we're learning about Planet Nine. And if, like me, you think that refers to Pluto, then we both have a lot to learn.
Unknown:All that I can do with the calculations that that, you know, we run is predict an orbit and a mass of something. So I can't tell you if it's a five Earth mass burrito, maybe it's a five Earth mass, I don't know beer glass. I don't know like it could be anything. It could be as long as it's five masses it can really be anything. But then you come to the question of what things get in the universe get stamped out at five Earth masses and the typical thing is planets.