The [Undoubted] Intelligence of Dogs

"Almost everything a dog [is] claimed to do, other animals could do too. During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to ‘prove’ how clever dogs are. They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs ‘win’, this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional. Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks." 

“[T]heir intelligence is what you would expect of an animal that is... recently descended from social hunters... that are carnivores and that have [also] been domesticated. There’s no other animal that fits all three of those criteria."

"Far be it for me to suggest that pigeons are smarter than dogs; they are not intellectual giants. But if you want to get one thousand miles, I trust a pigeon over a dog."
Stephen Lea, psychologist, University of Exeter,  co-author, new study

"A dog can't tell  you, 'Hey, I smell marijuana' or 'I smell meth'."
"They have the same behaviour for any drug that they've been trained on."
Tommy Klein, police chief, Rifle, Colorado

"[If just one chemical indicated malaria] we'd have discovered it by now."
"It's more like a tune of many notes, and the dogs can pick it up."
Claire Guest, study dog handler

"Taking all three groups (domestic animals, social hunters and carnivorans) into account, dog cognition does not look exceptional [in the studied fields of sensory cognition, physical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition and self-awareness].".
"We are doing dogs no favour by expecting too much of them. Dogs are dogs, and we need to take their needs and true abilities into account when considering how we treat them."

Britta Osthaus, expert, animal cognition, Canterbury Christ Church University

They're our familiars, in our homes or wherever we take them for companionship. They're fairly intelligent; the average dog breed becomes accustomed to hearing sounds and becomes adept at interpreting words, knowing through repetition what they mean and then they respond accordingly. Some dogs have astonishing 'vocabulary' recognition. Above that, they can read our moods and emotions, sometimes seeming to know us intimately. To the attention we give them they respond with obvious affection reciprocating what we feel ourselves. They're loyal and they lighten our moods, expanding the quality of our lives. We depend upon them as much as they do us.

And here's a new study telling us that though they are intelligent there are other animal species equally and perhaps even more intelligent. Of course some canine breeds are 'smarter' than others; the working type dogs for example, the herders whose sharp instincts equal sharper intelligence. Still, it's hard to credit that such intelligent dogs may have the comprehensive ability of say, a three-year-old child, but we're not to read too much into that. At least that's the message we're given by this new study.

Dr. Lea of Exeter University and his colleagues conclude that dogs can be trained to carry out tasks and it is that capability that invests us with the belief they are intelligent. And they certainly are. Training, however, has its limits. Police forces in North American are beginning to realize across Canada and in some American states, that drug-sniffing dogs haven't proven to be as efficient at sniffing out particular drugs as anticipated.

Since the legalization of marijuana has come the understanding that dogs could sniff out a legal drug leaving the impression that the drug is really an illegal drug; differentiation between the chemicals may elude them. And so, it took a court in Colorado to rule that a dog trained to sniff out a variety of drugs couldn't be relied upon to detect illegal activity at a traffic stop since the animal could be in fact alerting police to a newly-legalized drug. To identify each type and transmit that difference to its handler is asking somewhat too much of even highly intelligent dogs.

Experts feel that dogs do in fact find it troublesome to learn new tricks, making it difficult to teach them to cease picking up scents they were originally trained to hunt for. Which really does validate that old adage "you can;t teach an old dog new tricks". Their extraordinary olfactory sense can then be put usefully to work in other types of environments, for their noses are ten thousand to one-hundred thousand times more sensitive than human ability to identify scent.

Dogs have demonstrated they have the ability to detect bladder and ovarian cancer in urine samples, and lung cancer in breath samples. According to yet another study they may be able to sniff out malaria. Research shows that dogs can accurately identify socks worn overnight by children in Gambia infected with malaria parasites; an ability researchers cannot quite quantify other than to note the parasites produce organic compounds similar to those found in perfumes.

Inexpensive and swift-acting tests for malaria are available, but dogs could be useful in sorting through crowds of people where malaria has been eliminated in countries, which share borders with other countries where it has not yet been eliminated, as well as their potential usefulness in sweeping through villages in those region close to eliminating the disease so carriers could be ferreted out.

It is not only dogs, however, but local animals like African giant pouched rats which could be trained for that same purpose. According to Steve W. Lindsay, one of the authors of the malaria study, African giant pouched rats have already been successfully put to use detecting land mines and tuberculosis. "But at ports of entry, I think people would rather see dogs running around, than rats", observed Dr. Lindsay.

Dr. Lea and his co-researchers compared dog cognition with those of wolves, cats, chimpanzees, dolphins, horses and homing pigeons to conclude that "dog cognition does not look exceptional".

Other than to people whose close collaboration and companionship with dogs place them in a position to beg otherwise.