Discerning Dogs

Some dogs can sort toys by function like human children do

- Anirban Mukhopadhyay

Border collie Arya

ARYA, A SIX-YEAR-OLD border collie in Italy, can learn a new toy’s name with just one or two mentions. Her owners say she even knows words for her favorite foods; when pizza is on the menu, the word has to be whispered. Arya’s gift made her a natural subject for research showing that some dogs with unusually large vocabularies can go beyond simply memorizing terms.

For the new study, published in Current Biology, owners of 10 talented dogs—mostly border collies—taught them words for objects in two categories: tug toys, called “pulls,” and fetch toys, called “throws.” All toys were different in size, shape and color so appearance could not guide learning.