Researchers from Hungary have recently conducted a study in order to find out which dog breed is the smartest. The selected dogs took part in the Genius Dog Challenge. This project began this year on November 11. You can follow these challenges in live so that you can enjoy watching how six clever dogs compete in order to become the smartest dog. The aim of this project is scientific because there is a need for a better understanding of the origin of language in dogs.
In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Claudia Fugazza from Eötvös Loránd University, said that in order to find pooches who are able to recognize names of different toys, they picked six dogs on Facebook. Interestingly, all of the six dogs found in Norway, Spain, Hungary, Brazil, and the Netherlands are border collies. It seems like these dogs are more likely to have this ability to understand the names of inanimate objects.
It is a fact that this ability is rarely found in dogs. They are more likely to learn following commands than to learn the names of different objects. As researchers admit, it was really hard finding suitable competitors, and even training the dogs didn’t give the desired results.
The Genius Dog Challenge was divided into two rounds. In the first one, dogs have one week to learn to recognize the names of six new toys. In the second round, they will have to remember the names of 12 objects. These rounds you can follow live on Youtube and Facebook for a month, starting from November 11 until December 16. The names of the six dog participants are Whisky, Rico, Squall, Max, Nalani, and Gaia.
The researchers from this project hope that this challenge will be more than just a month full of funny challenges. Their goal is to encourage other smart dogs to join too. If you have such kind of pet then you can apply by taking a video according to guidelines to show your dog’s linguistic skills. If they choose your dog, then probably its behavior will be investigated and will pass through neuroimaging so that researchers will have a clearer picture of what’s going on in your puppy’s brain.
