Good memory

Clever dogs memorize vocabulary for years

Highly talented dogs can not only understand words, but also remember them.(Bild: Tanya - stock.adobe.com)

Highly talented dogs remember the names of their toys for years. Not only can they understand words, they can also remember them. This was proven by five clever Border Collies.

Highly gifted dogs remember the names of their toys for years, reports Viennese behavioral biologist Shany Dror: "Although humans are probably the only species capable of language, we are not the only ones who remember words."

In 2020, Dror and her colleagues set six owners of talented Border Collies around the world the challenge of teaching them the names of a dozen different dog toys in a short space of time.

Video: The "Genius Dog Challenge"

"The dogs from Norway, Spain, Brazil, the USA, the Netherlands and Hungary were astonished when they showed that they could learn eleven to twelve such 'foreign words' within a week".

Toys were stowed away for two years
The researchers then asked the owners to stow the toys away out of reach of the four-legged friends and only came back two years later with a new task: they wanted to test whether the clever dogs had memorized the names of the toys.

Smart four-legged friends wanted

Austrian four-legged friends with a special talent for learning and memorizing vocabulary are being sought for further intelligence tests with dogs. Owners who suspect this in their best friends should contact her, says the researcher. E-mail: [e-mail]

Some of the owners had forgotten where they had put the dog toys, but the dogs had not remembered their names. The remaining items were placed in a neighboring room and the Border Collies were asked to fetch the stuffed rabbit "Thumper", the snack bag "Yummypack" or rubber legs "Chicken Wings".

"Nalani" from the Netherlands had sadly passed away by then, but the other five canine geniuses "Max", "Whisky", "Gaia", "Rico" and "Squall" proved to have excellent memory skills. They memorized up to three quarters of the toy names.