‘Gifted’ dogs can learn new words just by eavesdropping
The study, published in the journal Science, explores the number of toys a dog can name — and it found that that number “seems to be endless, only bound by their owner’s patience and how much space they have in their house for toys,” Shany Dror, a post-doctoral researcher at E.L.T.E. University in Budapest and at the Veterinary University of Vienna, told Quirks & Quarks.
But she notes this is a very rare trait, saying the team found about 40 to 45 dogs with the ability to learn more than 100 words during a seven-year worldwide search. Those dogs could understand between 200 and 300 toy names, and she said previous studies found one dog that could understand over 1,000 words — again, all names of toys.
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2026-03-04
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