Dogs are not as smart as we think they are
Lassie, the canine film-star, performed remarkable feats of derring-do, outwitting the villain in one particularly memorable sequence by floating down a river on a log, writes
Our heroine was, however, somewhat miscast. Rough collies have long snouts and small narrow heads, limiting the size of their brains. As a result, the members of this elegant breed are not the brightest dog-stars in the firmament. Lassie’s more proletarian cousin, the ‘border’ collie champion of sheepdog trials, is a much more capable operator.
There are anecdotal accounts of real-life Lassie rescues. During World War I, a ship was torpedoed off the south coast of England.
The bodies of victims were laid out on the floor of a pub in Lyme Regis. It’s claimed that a mongrel named Lassie, inspecting each body in turn, discovered that one man was still alive.
She licked his face and used her body to warm him until help arrived. The story is, no doubt, apocryphal. Dogs have been bred for intelligence and empathy towards humans but, are they, as a result, especially bright? Where should we place them on the classical scala naturae, ‘the ladder of nature’?
Stephen Lea and Britta Osthaus of Exeter and Canterbury Universities have addressed this question by carrying out a detailed examination of the scientific literature. They focused on the behaviour of wild and domestic species, believed to be especially intelligent, and compared their performances with that of ‘man’s best friend’. The findings are summarised in the current edition of Learning & Behaviour.
Ever since Pavlov’s famous experiments on canine salivation in the 1920s, dogs have been the subject of much psychological research. However, comparing their performances with those of wild creatures is especially difficult. Cognitive tests on dogs are likely to be influenced by their social interactions with researchers.
The conditions under which they are kept differ radically from those in the wild, tainting the results of experiments. When dogs and wolves, under the same regime in the 1980s, were confronted with tasks requiring cooperation, the wolves came out best. Establishing a level playing field in experiments isn’t easy.
There was evidence of ‘over interpretation’ in many studies, the authors say. Some researchers clearly wanted to show that dogs are exceptionally clever and this prejudice militated against objective assessment. Nor has such bias done dogs a favour; we need to remember that dogs are dogs. They are not precocious children and shouldn’t be treated as though they were.
To examine animal ‘brain power’, Lea and Osthaus focused on creatures with lifestyles similar to that of dogs; meat-eaters, cooperative hunters and domesticated species. ‘Dog cognition is influenced by membership of all three of these groups’, the researchers claim. Intelligence was examined under the headings of ‘sensory cognition’, ‘physical cognition’, ‘social cognition’ and ‘self-awareness’, ‘behaviour systems’ which ‘emerged through evolution’.
Taking everything into account, ‘dog cognition does not look exceptional’, the scientists conclude. The literature on ‘wolves, cats, spotted hyenas, chimpanzees, dolphins, horses and pigeons’ shows that some species perform at least as well as dogs in each of the various spheres. ‘Dog cognition’, they write, ‘does not look exceptional’. Our canine companions are not a ‘special case’.
The doggy fraternity, alas, won’t be thrilled with these findings. However, Lea and Osthaus add the caveat ‘that future research might change our views’.
