Whiskey, a border collie aged 6, has taught herself the names of 90 different objects – and she can even bring one when requested.
The highly intelligent pooch can tell balls from Frisbees and rings from ropes. She can even sort new objects into their groups.
When researchers were first introduced to Whiskey, she knew 59 toys by their names. According to her owners, she has learned 31 more by now.
However, Whiskey still has to go a long way to beat the world record for being the most intelligent dog.
The record currently belongs to another border collie named Chaser, a psychologist’s pet. That smart dog learned a total of 1,000 words before dying last year.
A researcher from the Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, Claudia Fugazza, said of Whisky: “At first it was hard for me to believe that a dog learned the name of so many toys, but after several days of rigorous testing, I had to change my mind.”
“We noticed that, among her toys, Whisky had several exemplars belonging to one of 4 categories: she had 10 different balls, 7 different rings, 4 different ropes, and 4 different Frisbees,” Dr. Fugazza added.
Whiskey’s owners refer to the objects she plays with by a name and a category, for example, a Frisbee is a colorful ring. They did not intentionally train Whiskey to learn the categories but it appears that she learned them on her own during the interaction with her owners.
“This provided us a rare opportunity: testing whether a dog had spontaneously formed some mental categories, simply by being exposed to their exemplars — pretty much like a human child would do,” Dr. Fugazza continued.
“Most studies on the ability of non-human animals to categorize are conducted after the subjects are extensively trained to recognize categories with a given set of exemplars,” said Ádám Miklósi, co-author of the research.
“Only after reaching the predetermined criterion, they are tested on their ability to categorize novel items belonging to those learned categories,” he added.
To test Whiskey’s intelligence, the researchers came up with a new set of toys. The dog was tasked to bring a toy from one of the four requested categories including rings, ropes, balls, and Frisbees.
The study showed that Whiskey brought the toys with far more accuracy than random chance allows.
Her accuracy improved when she was given some time to play with the new toys, even though her owners were not allowed to name the objects for her.
“This suggests that, although Whisky relied on the visual features of the toys (e.g., their shape), experiencing the function — for example, how to play with them or the way they move — helped her to make a choice,” said Dr. Fugazza.
To ensure transparency in the research and to restrict Whiskey’s owners from pointing towards or looking at the toy she was supposed to pick up, the researchers placed the toys out of sight of the owners.
Researchers have made the point that Whiskey’s skills match those of a baby learning the names of things at a young age.
“Whisky’s achievements mirror human capacities more closely than typical animal studies in two key factors: the lack of specific training for categorization prior to the tests and the use of words to indicate the categories,” said Professor Miklósi.
“Since this study was conducted on one subject and dogs with vocabulary knowledge are extremely rare, this capacity should not be automatically extended to all the dogs,” he added.
“However, the results do reveal that spontaneous categorization in the absence of specific training is not a mental skill that is present only in humans.”
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