For All of You Who Think Dogs Are Stupid

You should watch this video. It features Dr. Pilley and his dog, Chaser, whom he taught over 1,000 nouns, as well as the names of different verbs.


Impossible, you say? Well, Dr. Pilley bought Chaser when she was a puppy and "started to train her for four to five hours a day. He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times, then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time. She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten." In order to remember all the names Chaser had to learn, Pilley wrote the name on each toy with indelible marker. In three years, Chaser’s vocabulary included 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 Frisbees and a medley of plastic items.

One of the questions that Pilley also wanted to tackle was whether a dog understands a verb, like fetch, separately from its objects. In other words: Did she think of her toys as items labeled fetch-ball, fetch-Frisbee, fetch-doll, or did she understand the word “fetch” separately? Pilley found the answer by teaching Chaser 3 different actions: pawing, nosing and taking an object. She was then presented with three of her toys and correctly pawed, nosed or fetched each one depending on the command given to her. “That experiment demonstrates conclusively that Chaser understood that the verb had a meaning,” Pilley said.

Some might argue that Chaser is merely looking at Pilley for the cue to the right answer (like the famous horse 'Clever Hans'). If you watch the video, however, Pilley is hidden behind a screen so as to not give any non-verbal cues to Chaser.

So take that, all you haters! Our dogs would understand more of what we were talking about, if we just took the time to try and communicate with them.



Quotes from the New York Times article, Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl!, on page D1 of the New York edition on January 18, 2011.
Both images by Cass Sapir/Nova Science Now.