Ethologists from the University of Budapest have learned that a dog’s talent can be demonstrated by its playfulness. They talked about it in a magazine article. Animal Cognition.
Only a few gifted dogs can remember the names of a few of their toys and retain them for more than two months. Researchers asked owners of 144 dogs without such a talent, as well as 21 dogs, to complete a pet personality questionnaire. Since most gifted dogs belong to the Border Collie breed, scientists simply invited their owners to participate.
Comparing surveys of gifted and non-gifted dogs, the researchers found that the only trait that was significantly more common in the former was playfulness – they liked to play with their toys more than others. While border collies are generally playful on their own, many gifted dogs display this trait particularly often.
“This study demonstrates an association between extremely high levels of playfulness and aptitude for verbal object tagging in dogs,” the authors said.
They stressed that acting alone is unlikely to be the reason for better memory abilities. Interestingly, in humans, this character trait is associated with the ability to solve problems.
Source: Gazeta
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