Border Collie Comprehends Over 1,000 Object Names as Verbal Referents

[Joanne98]

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2011) — Researchers at Wofford College discovered that a border collie comprehends the names of over 1,000 objects, differentiating between names of objects and orders to fetch them. This research deepens the findings of researchers in Germany, who had discovered a dog that knew the names of a couple of hundred objects. Important questions were left open as to how far a dog could go, and whether the dog really understood that the object names were nouns and not commands to retrieve the object.

John Pilley and Alliston Reid answered two central questions with their research: How large can a dog's vocabulary become if given extensive training? What do dogs actually understand when we use human language to communicate with them? These findings are published in the Elsevier journal Behavioural Processes.

The authors demonstrated that their dog, Chaser, learned the names of 1,022 objects -- no upper limit is apparent -- they stopped training the dog after three years due to their time constraints, not because the dog could not learn more names. This study demonstrates Chaser's ability to learn the names of proper nouns, and her extensive vocabulary was tested repeatedly under carefully controlled conditions. The authors admitted that she remembered the names of each of her 1022 toys better than they could. Chaser's ability to learn and remember more than 1000 proper nouns, each mapped to a unique object, revealed clear evidence of several capacities necessary for learning receptive human language: the ability to discriminate between 1,022 different sounds representing names of objects, the ability to discriminate many objects visually, an extensive vocabulary, and a substantial memory system that allowed the mapping of many auditory stimuli to many visual stimuli.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106144252.htm

[grasswire]

1. my border collie is smarter than....

.....

Yes. He's pretty smart. Duffy the Border Collie in my family. He spent two years in a shelter, was rescued and now lives with me.

Love dem dogs.

Great story, thanks.

[roguevalley]

9. My Australian Coolie was the smartest dog I ever saw. Shepherds

are genius smart dogs.

[pacalo]

2. My Boston Terrier understands a lot of what we say.

"Go get your towel."

"I don't have your treats...Poppy has them."

"Stay with me."

He knows the difference between the names of his toys, too: ball, rope toy, mailman, frisbee.

He's a true pleasure to have around.

:loveya:

[3waygeek]

3. That's at least 10x as many as Boehner n/t

[TheCentepedeShoes]

4. My poodle

knows that when he hears the closing music to NBC Nightly News it is time for his dinner

[northernlights]

5. Chase has 1,022 toys?!?!?!!!!

Don't anybody let my dog Jake see this article. He will immediately feel horribly deprived until he has 1,022 toys. I'm still trying to find him a noodle, since he saw one at the beach this summer. I ran around looking for a noodle for him for weeks afterward, but they were all sold out. He felt so deprived ever since he saw that lime green noodle...

[tblue37]

8. I bet you could find oneonline! nt

[westerebus]

6. If the choice is up to me.

I'd spend my time with a border collie as opposed to any of the 535 member's of the Congress.

Maggie found us in the shelter. Best dam decision that dog ever made.

I still don't know how she knew she was going to live on a horse farm.

She was left tied to the front door of the shelter during the night. No note. Nothing but the dog.

Best estimate by the vet was she was not quite two years old when we had her fixed which was a condition of adoption.

The wife and I parted company in 95 divorced in 97.

Maggie passed away in 99.

I still miss that dog.

[Joanne98]

10. Get yourself another one.

:hi:

[westerebus]

13. I would if I had the time.

It's not fair to the dog if they can't do what they were bred for. At the least, they need to run a dozen miles a day just to keep themselves sane.

Once I get back out into the country, it's a go. :hi:

[benld74]

7. Beats ANY GOP rep on the Hill thats for sure,,,

[MissDeeds]

11. My two bichons understand everything

except "no" and "stop".

[TheCentepedeShoes]

15. The probably think

No and Stop are their names

[Judi Lynn]

12. We were privileged to have a Border Collie living with us for almost 19 years.

29 years would have never been as long as we would have loved. Simply incomparable. Deeply missed.

Thank you, Joanne98. This information is clearly credible.

[Duppers]

14. mine died of cancer at age 13

and I'm still grieving after 3 yrs.