Who's a clever boy: the average dog has a mental age of about two. But what are they really thinking?
Briefly

The article discusses how dogs possess remarkable linguistic abilities, potentially understanding over 1,000 words, akin to human children. Through anecdotes, such as a dog finding misplaced car keys by recognizing specific words, the piece highlights that dogs learn language through inference rather than mere repetition. Research by psychology professor Juliane Kaminski, particularly with a border collie named Rico, supports this claim, demonstrating dogs' ability to deduce names of new objects. The article invites readers to reflect on the cognitive abilities of dogs, contrasting them with their wolf ancestors and noting their keen observation skills in human interactions.
Dogs can know hundreds of words for objects, possibly over 1,000. This understanding is learned similarly to how children learn language, not merely by repetition.
Psychology professor Juliane Kaminski demonstrated that a dog named Rico could learn new words by inference, identifying items by exclusion, much like children do.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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