Dogs as intelligent as two-year-old children

[Cetacea]

"...Professor Coren showed a knowledge of 200 spoken words. 'Obviously we are not going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with a dog, but like a two-year-old, they show that they can understand words and gestures,' says Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Dogs can tell that one plus one should equal two and not one or three,' says Coren, adding that dogs 'can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.' Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. 'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'"


http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/09/1951243/Dogs-As-Intelligent-As-Average-Two-Year-Old-Children



So where do dolphins weigh in?

[Teaser]

1. dolphins....too differenc to tell.

so much of their brain is devoted to acoustic processing. Maybe they're not as smart as dogs, but are musical geniuses?

[angstlessk]

2. damn and the dolphin has smaller bodies and fewer demands on their brains

bet they will outsmart us unless we totally destroy their habitat before we destroy ours! Damn..I had no idea their brains were so large. I know elephants have larger brains, but they also have larger bodies..and ant/human brain/body size..I think the ant beats us?

[dorkulon]

6. Untrue.

Dolphins are larger than us and a large portion of their brain is devoted to an extremely sophisticated sonar sense.

[Cetacea]

15. Yes and no.

They are larger but they don't have to devote as much of their brain to dealing with gravity as we do.
They also appear to have a fourth lobe which some researchers believe is dedicated to sensory/motor functions. (pretty scary if that is true).
Also, there is a theory that larger brains need larger bodies for protection against rotary acceleration.
For instance, if a dog had the agility of a cat the dog would invariably suffer from brain damage.

[ruggerson]

3. And puppies are far cuter than babies

:)

[Kalyke]

11. That's debatable.

I mean, there's this:



Compared to this:




:)


(The first one is mine. I pity the photographer of the second picture. :rofl:)

[teranchala]

4. It amazes me that some people don't see that "lower" animals can reason.

Watch most any critter and you can see them making a rational decision, which in my opinion is the very essence of reasoning. It's easy with a domestic pet...watch your dog or cat - they will analyze a set of options, say...the fastest way to get from where they are to point B and after a couple seconds they almost invariably pick the most efficient one. That is something we humans don't often accomplish.

[JonQ]

5. I think this is an interesting quote:

"Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. 'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'"

It could simply be that we've bred them to express more of what we consider intelligence, namely being able to respond the same way we would in various situations and understand our verbal cues.

Alot of how we define intelligence concerns communication skills, valuable to a social organism like humans or dogs, but less so to solitary animals.

An interesting study, but I have reserves about any study regarding "intelligence" as the term itself is very much in dispute.

[teranchala]

7. Perhaps but one thing seems clear: Dogs understand more of our language than we

do of theirs. That might be a factor in what intelligence actually is. :-)

[JonQ]

14. I don't know, I think we pick up on their cues pretty well

you can generally tell when a dog is happy, or frightened, or aggressive. The more interactions you have with them the better you can understand them, and vice versa.

I think they lucked out because their forms of verbal and nonverbal communication happen to have been very similiar to ours to begin with, that's how they got to be our best friends.

Whereas cats don't seem interested in communicating at all, since they don't tend to be social, so their cues are a little less intuitive to us.

[teranchala]

22. hehe...well I was being a little silly there and I sure agree with your point

I can't remember how many times I've gone up to a dog and scratched its ears only to have the 'owner' run up and yell "watch out that dog is vicious" as it licks my hand. Intra- or inter-species communication has to work both ways. As for cats, all the rules are void. I think our cat loves me at hungry time...which is about half the usual day. Feline brains are not wired like any other mammal's.
:D

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. Two year olds are as intelligent as dogs

[Kalyke]

9. Duh.

I've been calling my dogs my "perpetual 2-year-olds" for years.

And, I say that as the mother of a 10-year-old human son who was once 2 years old AND as the mother of a now 2-year-old human daughter.

[NNN0LHI]

10. Maybe thats why we call it the terrible twos?

[Cheap_Trick]

12. I guess the conservative brain is too miniscule to be seen on the chart......

:rofl:

[donco6]

19. Somewhere below amoeba. Or tapeworm. n/t

[Cetacea]

21. lol n/t

[me b zola]

13. My dogs are more intelligent than my repub in-laws

My dogs don't act against their own best interest and I find it much easier to reason with my dogs than my in-laws.

[zbdent]

16. and light-years ahead of birthers ...

[Cetacea]

17. Duzy. n/t

[zbdent]

26. alas, JeffR's on hiatus from Duzy patrol

[donco6]

18. I don't think it's apples to apples, though.

Honestly, my dogs are smarter than a lot of two-yr olds. They learned how not to poop in the house at 8 weeks or so. They won't go in the street on a dare. They know what's good to eat and not eat without me telling them.

But yeah, they'll never be able to throw a fit like a two year old. Selecting *just* the opportune time (church, grandmas, at a restaurant) is a true gift of genius.

[shadowknows69]

20. Hell, my dog is smarter than me on some days.

[rd_kent]

23. Not possible

Because my dog is smarter than most adults, although that is not saying much anymore......

[napi21]

24. My dogs are smarter than most of the people I know. I also trust

them on judgement of people much more than I trust muself. If my dogs don't like someone, there's something wrong. Every time I've had a new neighbor or friend come to my home and my very friendly dogs don't take to them, in time it's proven the dogs were right.

As to words, we've had to resort to spelling things like OUT, RIDE, WALK, DINNER, BISQUIT, etc.

[Odin2005]

25. 2yo children have an instinctual capacity for language, dogs don't

[iris27]

27. Human children have the physical features necessary to develop spoken

language, dogs don't. I don't think we can assume anything about dogs' instinctual capacities in this regard.

[Odin2005]

30. Dogs don't have the inborn developmental capacity to learn language.

Even chimps can't comprehend more than simple 2-word phrases like "Want food" and "Me Happy"

[liberalmuse]

28. In other words...

dogs are way smarter than your average Republican.

[Walk away]

34. exceptional ones as well. n/t

[tocqueville]

29. what about blue dogs ? nt

[a la izquierda]

31. My dog reasons...

he can jump 4 foot fences without a running leap. He'll watch us carefully, while pretending to be simply sniffing around the yard. The second we look away, over the fence he goes.

[Bluzmann57]

32. My two year old grandson is going through his republican phase

His two favorite words seem to be "mine" and "no". I don't have a dog, but when I did, he was more well behaved than a two year old kid. The kid will grow out of his phase though. I hope.

[mmonk]

33. In other words, more intelligent than Republican adults.