Dog intelligence

Dogs have often been used in studies of cognition, including research on perception, awareness, memory, and learning, notably research on classical and operant conditioning. In the course of this research, behavioral scientists uncovered a surprising set of social-cognitive abilities in the domestic dog, abilities that are neither possessed by dogs' closest canine relatives nor by other highly intelligent mammals such as great apes. Rather, these skills resemble some of the social-cognitive skills of human children. This may be an example of convergent evolution, which happens when distantly related species independently evolve similar solutions to the same problems. For example, fish, penguins and dolphins have each separately evolved flippers as solution to the problem of moving through the water. With dogs and humans, we may see psychological convergence; that is, dogs have evolved to be cognitively more similar to humans than we are to our closest genetic relatives.

However, it is questionable whether the cognitive evolution of humans and animals may be called "independent". The cognitive capacities of dogs have inevitably been shaped by millennia of contact with humans.As a result of this physical and social evolution, many dogs readily respond to social cues common to humans, quickly learn the meaning of words, show cognitive bias and exhibit emotions that seem to reflect those of humans.

Research suggests that domestic dogs may have lost some of their original cognitive abilities once they joined humans. For example, one study showed compelling evidence that dingoes (Canis dingo) can outperform domestic dogs in non-social problem-solving experiments. Another study indicated that after being trained to solve a simple manipulation task, dogs that are faced with an unsolvable version of the same problem look at a nearby human, while socialized wolves do not. Thus, modern domestic dogs seem to use humans to solve some of their problems for them.

In 2014, a whole genome study of the DNA differences between wolves and dogs found that dogs did not show a reduced fear response; they showed greater synaptic plasticity. Synaptic plasticity is widely believed to be the cellular correlate of learning and memory, and this change may have altered the learning and memory abilities of dogs.

Most modern research on dog cognition has focused on pet dogs living in human homes in developed countries, a small fraction of the dog population. Dogs from other populations may show different cognitive behaviors. Breed differences possibly could impact on spatial learning and memory abilities.
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