06/22/2009 - 10:08am

You Always Knew Your Dog Was Smart- Now Proof of Dog’s Learning Capabilities

Just like their owners, dogs can form abstract concepts. Scientists at the University of Vienna have shown that dogs can classify complex color photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do. Furthermore, the dogs successfully learned through the use of computer automated touchscreens!!
The scientists showed dogs pictures of landscapes and of dogs on a touchscreen. During training, the dogs were shown both landscape and dog photographs and were rewarded with a food tread if they selected the dog picture. Then came the tests:

In the first test, the dogs were shown pictures of dogs and landscapes separately and they continued to select the dog photographs. They transferred their knowledge to a new set of visual stimuli, even though they had never seen the new pictures before.

In the second test, the dogs were shown new dog pictures pasted onto the landscape pictures used in the training phase. This combined new positive stimuli (the new dog pictures) with negative stimuli (the landscapes).

When the dogs were faced with choosing between the new dog on the familiar landscape and a completely new landscape with no dog, they consistently selected the option with the dog. They were able to form the concept of “dog” and were able to transfer this concept to a new setting, and they were able to successfully do all of this on a computer screen!! Now those are smart dogs.