Dogs As Intelligent As Average Two-Year-Old Children 472
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Telegraph reports that researchers using tests originally designed to demonstrate the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in human children have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations putting them on par with the average two-year-old child. While most dogs understand simple commands such as sit, fetch and stay, a border collie tested by 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.'"
Re:Wolves (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, wolves score lower than domestic dogs on the intelligence tests used. I suspect this may be an artifact of the test, since wolves are pretty damned smart in their wild behaviors. But unsurprisingly, domestic dogs have a kind of intelligence that responds better to tests designed by the same species that's been breeding and training them for the last several thousand years.
'As Stupid As Two Year Old Kids' (Score:2, Informative)
If you are child-less, and thus have little patience for the little monsters, you'd say that dogs *can* be as stupid and annoying as those screaming spoiled rotten two year old brats at McDonalds. Please, parents, stick them in that soundproof screaming chamber area with the playground equipment!
Re:dog lover science. (Score:5, Informative)
You're comparing a fully-mature animal to one in its infancy.
Profoundly retarded humans, such as adults who operate on a two-year-old level, still have what we recognize as human-type intelligence. They don't have as much of it as most people do, obviously, but they still think like humans as opposed to cattle, or hawks, or trout. So if dogs think similarly enough to us to score at all on human-type intelligence tests, then it's silly to say that their intelligence is "not even remotely human."
Original Article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've suspected this for a while (Score:3, Informative)
Working at an abattoir doesn't make you a psychopath. Working at an abattoir so you can take animals to "the back room" and torture them before work does.
As the US Government has recently demonstrated to the world, the term 'torture' is subjective. It's like porn -- you know it when you see it, right? You have vegetarians that claim killing animals in and of itself is 'torture'. On the other extreme, you have corporate farms that pack animals in so tightly they die in double-digit percentages. It's not that they actively seek to harm the animal, they just want to maximize profits. Somewhere between these two extremes is a balancing point that we unquestionably accept as natural, even though historically that's a moving target. I would have to say 'torture' can be defined as anything intentionally and willfully done either largely or exclusively to cause pain to another. YMMV.
Re:evolutionist's are funny, and no I wont registe (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution isn't some "magic memory" passed on magically from one cow that dies to all other cows that are born after that. Evolution is the result of tiny mutations that for one reason or another have been continuously passed down from generation to generation. All of the cows that have "realized" that they were about to be slaughtered (not that they would be capable of that kind of realization in the first place) have also been... well, slaughtered.
Not that this study had much to do with evolution. It just has to do with dog's current levels of intelligence.
Re:evolutionist's are funny, and no I wont registe (Score:1, Informative)
I have been there as they wag their tails, my granpa was a farmer. The ones I seen seemed as happy as they were just feed.
Re:evolutionist's are funny, and no I wont registe (Score:5, Informative)
Crows or other corvids are very smart too (smarter than chimps in some ways). Anyway, given the sorts of stuff they eat, it's probably a good idea to not eat them ;).
Octopuses are also quite smart. At least one seem to have rather poor memory though - forgets after a few days and has to relearn stuff.
http://www.pitara.com/discover/earth/online.asp?story=111 [pitara.com]