Are dogs as smart as toddlers?

Snoopy helps Charlie Brown to get a date with a cute classmate and gets him out of every little scrap as well. Lassie instinctively knows how to get back home to her family. Benji knows how to fight with the bad guys. Apart from these being fictional characters, dogs truly have a substantial level of social intelligence. Hence, they make good security dogs, military dogs, therapy dogs, cancer and drug detectors.

According to the study done by Stanley Coren, a canine researcher from the University of British Columbia, Dogs have the ability to solve problems just like humans. If you are wondering what causes them to display such outstanding display of grit, courage, creativity and intelligence, the answer is simple. Dogs have the mental abilities of 2 years old toddlers!

There are basically three types of intelligence seen in dogs:

1. Instinctive:  This is what comes naturally to them and their particular breed
2. Adaptive:  This depends on how the dog is able to adjust to their environment and learns to solve problems accordingly.
3. Working and obedience:  It depends on how well they respond to training and is similar to ‘school learning’. The Border Collie is ranked number one in this criteria, which is why they are used for herding livestock.        

Your canine buddy also has the uncanny ability to learn language and can understand more than 165 words which also includes signals. Highly intelligent dogs otherwise known as ‘super dogs’ like the Border Collie can learn upto 250 words, says Coren. This research was done on a Border Collie named Rico, who clearly understood more than 200 words and excelled at fast – track learning which was found only in humans and a few language learning apes.

Dogs also are quite a whizz with math as well. They can count upto 5!  They have the basic understanding of numbers and can spot small errors in counting such as 1+1=1 or 1+1=3.

Our canine buddy is also good at spatial reasoning through observing human or other dog’s behaviour in a problem. Through diligent observation they can locate treats, find better routes to reach a desired environment, how to operate simple mechanisms like a latch or a switch. During their playtime, dogs are also smart enough to trick people and other dogs to get their reward!

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