This article talks about a Border Collie, Chaser, who has a vocabulary of 1,022 nouns. Her owner, Dr. Piley, who is a psychologist, trains with her up to five hours per day. Along with about 1000 common nouns, Chaser also knows categories. She can distinguish between “fetch the green Frisbee” and “fetch a Frisbee.” Even more amazingly, she can correctly put a noun and a verb together, such as “paw” and “ball.” Dr. Piley has also tested her intelligence in a lab setting, to ensure that she is not just picking up on non-verbal cues, such as facial expression or subtle body language, but that she actually understands what each word means.
Does this really mean anything, or is Chaser just abnormally smart? While most pet owners do not have five hours a day to spend training with their pets, Chaser’s accomplishments bring a new light to the mental capacity of dogs. The size of her vocabulary is related to that of a child, and while nowhere near our own, is far beyond what was originally thought our pets to be capable of. Chaser’s accomplishment may have future implications on how we will one day communicate and teach our pets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18dog.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sit%20stay%20parse&st=cse
That's an incredible dog! If all dogs have that capacity for understanding vocabulary and language, there will probably be even more advancements with service dogs, which would be great. A seeing eye dog that knows the difference between colors could even help a blind person get dressed.
ReplyDeleteYou raise a good question about Chaser's intelligence though. If he's just a super special dog, then that's great for his owners, but if all dogs can be that way, then dogs will be even more than just pets.
That's pretty interesting. I know there are a lot of animals that we once thought weren't that smart but science has proven otherwise. It will be interesting to see what else people can find out about not only dogs but other animals, and as Angela said, how they could be used differently in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite interesting, I remember my roommate a couple of days ago was watching a video for his evolution class. In the video there was dog that could also do similar things. She would put the objects and toys in another room and show similar objects to the dog, and the do would bring back the object in the room back to her. There was another test of showing the dog a picture of the object and it would also bring back that object.
ReplyDeleteI think there are specific traits that allow certain dogs to do this. If we can isolate this trait then, it would be a great thing for disable people who need help
Thats a remarkable story! Whats more interesting is that the author mentions the similarities between Chaser`s learning techniques and that of children. If Chaser or any other `high intelligence` animal can be completely understood then it would open a whole new realm to understanding how children understand language in their tender years. This could potentially have great scientific connotations.
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