Have you ever heard of “Chaser,” the Border Collie? She learned over 1,000 proper nouns throughout her life, including the names of hundreds and hundreds of toys. She was amazing! But are there other dogs that can learn to label their toys like that? It turns out there are.
Known as Gifted Word Learners (GWL), these dogs can easily learn the names of objects. But can they label the function of objects, too? And could your dog be such a genius?
What Is a Gifted Word Learner Dog?
Dr. Claudia Fugazza, PhD, of the Family Dog Project Research Group at the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, studies GWL dogs and defines them by their ability to quickly and effortlessly acquiring a vocabulary of object labels, such as the names of toys. So a GWL can tell a “rope” from a “ball” by each one’s name and can bring you the specific one you asked for from a pile of toys.
Interestingly, there is no specific number of toy names that distinguish GWLs from other dogs. It seems dogs can either learn them or they can’t. “When I started this project,” says Dr. Fugazza, “I wanted to compare dogs that knew only say three, four, five object labels to dogs that knew a lot. And I couldn’t find dogs that knew a few because even if a dog knows a few very quickly, they can really go up to hundreds of them.”
Can GWL Dogs Label Tug Toys Versus Fetch Toys?
But what about more abstract labels? Only a few experiments have shown that non-human animals can label objects by their function. It’s a challenging subject to study because you can’t use language to test animals that don’t understand what we’re saying. GWL dogs, however, gave Dr. Fugazza and her team the possibility to examine abstract categorization in dogs.
The team studied a group of 10 GWL dogs in an experiment published in Current Biology. Out of the 10, seven dogs completed the entire procedure. They instructed the dogs’ owners to play with their dog using toys and to label the style of play with each specific toy, either playing tug-of-war or throwing it.
So, the owner might say, “Look, this is a pull toy,” then play tug with it. Researchers assigned the toys to the two categories at random, so there were no physical characteristics in common between pull or throw toys.
To see if they understood the labels, they asked the dogs to retrieve a pull or throw toy from a group of toys in another room after four weeks. Eight of the dogs passed the test. Those owners then played with their dogs with a new set of toys, either tugging or throwing, but this time, they didn’t label the play. After one week, they asked the dogs to fetch either a pull or throw toy from another room that contained both the new toys and others from the dog’s original toy collection. On average, the dogs chose the correct toy 31 out of 48 trials. In addition, most of the dogs’ mistakes involved choosing an old pull or throw toy they had learned earlier.
Can All Dogs Classify the Function of Their Toys?
Dr. Fugazza was excited by the results, which show a level of awareness that wasn’t known to be present in dogs prior to this. But is it just GWLs? Although non-human animals don’t have language, when it comes to GWLs, language might shape the mind. “In the case of Gifted Word Learner dogs, at least they have one feature of language, which is the vocabulary of object labels. Now, is this what allows them to form these mental categories or not? We don’t really know.”
Dr. Fugazza thinks that all dogs could possess this skill. “I would say they do because that’s functional for survival. Like finding out whether items are bigger or smaller, finding out what items are used for, like in the case of the study that we published. We’ll see how this eventually differs and how word learning, or label learning, shapes this ability to form concepts.”
Are Certain Breeds More Likely to Be Gifted Word Learner Dogs?
This research is challenging because GWL dogs are extremely rare. Since 2017, Dr. Fugazza and her team have been searching for GWLs worldwide. In that time, they have only located about 50 or so of these exceptionally gifted dogs, and well over half of these dogs are Border Collies. Other breeds represented include:
Despite this, Dr. Fugazza points out that the majority of Border Collies don’t have this skill, even if you train them extensively. She conducted an earlier study published in Scientific Reports that tried to teach puppies and adult dogs object labels. The majority of the dogs in the study were Border Collies; but none of the dogs, puppies or adults, learned anything at all.
Despite the rarity, could there be a genetic basis to this incredible skill? Scientists don’t know, but Dr. Fugazza suspects it’s possible due to the dominance of Border Collies in the GWL group. Plus, some evidence of related dogs show similar abilities. She hopes to study this in the future if she can recruit more GWLs. “If it was the case, then we could really breed dogs that have this level of understanding, which would be so awesome for working dogs and even for family dogs.”
Could Your Dog Be a Gifted Word Learner?
But finding GWLs is difficult. Could your dog be one? Dr. Fugazza says many owners of GWLs have no idea of their dog’s special skill, likely because they didn’t have to put in any training effort. Their dog just picked it up on their own. And despite how rare these exceptional dogs are, she believes there are many more out there.
You can test your own dog using a protocol on the team’s Genius Dogs website to potentially participate in future projects by uploading a video of your dog in action. Through the website, Dr. Fugazza is also recruiting puppies that are motivated by toys to participate in experiments using features of how children and infants learn language. She hopes to see if these puppies, thanks to the neuroplasticity of their young brains, can learn words.
They might not become GWLs, but she says, “There’s a way maybe that we can shape their brain to facilitate their learning.”
What Can We Learn from Gifted Word Learner Dogs?
Although some owners assign human-like abilities to their dogs, and scientists are often more skeptical than they should be, Dr. Fugazza feels all dogs likely have greater cognitive ability than is often thought. Plus, dogs understand a lot more than we realize. “We know we are all dog lovers, and we all love to have dogs, but the level of mutual understanding could probably be improved more this way.”
She suggests that owners talk more with our dogs. Name the things that are relevant to your dog with a consistent label. “If we could reach an even deeper understanding with our dogs, that would be fantastic for dog welfare and for human satisfaction about the relationship.”
