Dogs are amazing, but some of them may be smarter than we ever realized, especially when it comes to learning and categorizing the things around them. Recent research reveals that gifted dogs can associate names with new objects, demonstrating a level of cognitive skill previously thought to be uniquely human.

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Arya the Border Collie: A Word-Learning Prodigy

Simone Avezza quickly realized his border collie puppy, Arya, was no ordinary dog. During Italy’s COVID-19 lockdown, Avezza and his partner began teaching Arya the names of her toys. They hid the toys for her to find. “She started learning one toy per day,” Avezza recalls. “We were absolutely buried by toys.”

Arya is now 6 years old and considered a “gifted word learner” by animal psychologists. She knows the names of her owners, their friends, other dogs, and about 70 toys. But Arya’s skills aren’t just a party trick; they’ve helped scientists uncover a surprising ability in dogs.

Dogs Can Categorize Objects by Function

A study published in Current Biology shows that gifted dogs like Arya can apply a category name to a new object, even if they’ve never heard the name used for that object before. For example, if a dog learns that a certain toy is for tug-of-war and is called “pull,” it can recognize a brand-new tug toy as a “pull” toy, without being explicitly told.

This mirrors a skill humans acquire as toddlers, like using the word “cup” for both teacups and sippy cups, even though they look different. It’s a level of abstract thinking rarely observed in non-human animals outside of primates, such as chimpanzees and bonobos.

How the Study Worked

Cognitive scientist Claudia Fugazza and her team recruited 10 gifted word-learning dogs from around the world. Owners were given eight new toys, some designed for fetch and others for tug-of-war, with no visual cues indicating their intended function.

Over the course of four weeks, owners introduced the toys and their associated names (“pull” or “fetch”). Once the dogs learned the labels, researchers tested whether they could extend the labels to brand-new toys:

• New toys were introduced without names.
• Dogs had to figure out which toy to fetch or pull based on previous experience.

The result? Dogs chose correctly about two-thirds of the time, well above chance. Arya herself performed exceptionally, choosing correctly 79% of the time.

Why This Is Remarkable

“These sounds seem to have a meaning that can be expanded to other items that look completely different but have the same function,” Fugazza explains. In other words, gifted dogs use object labels in a surprisingly humanlike way.

While the study only tested a small group, experts are excited about the implications. Juliane Bräuer of the Max Planck Institute notes, “Although we can’t assume this generalizes to all dogs, it shows that dogs are potentially capable of this type of reasoning.”

The Big Picture

This discovery sheds light on how dogs categorize objects mentally and adapt to human environments. Unlike lab studies, this research was conducted at home, making it less stressful for the dogs and more reflective of real-world learning.

For owners like Avezza, it’s also a fun way to engage their pets. “I’m extremely proud of her,” he says.

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Takeaway

Some dogs don’t just fetch; they think. Gifted canines like Arya are showing us that the mental gap between humans and dogs may be smaller than we thought. The ability to assign names and extend categories to new objects hints at a rich cognitive world inside our best friends’ heads.

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