Although the Border Collie is often praised for its superb working abilities, new research has highlighted another breed as exceptionally intelligent. Belgian Malinois may hold the top spot among canines for cognitive prowess, based on tests conducted with over 1,000 dogs spanning 13 breeds.
Malinois are renowned as keen trackers, dependable guard dogs, and versatile police canines. They also stand out for their independence, problem-solving skills, and rapid responsiveness to needs, along with a notable talent for reading people’s cues.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland assembled the most comprehensive dataset to date on the cognitive traits of different dog breeds. The project tested 1,000 dogs from 13 breeds across 10 tasks, including seven cognitive challenges and three behavioral assessments, evaluated by experts who developed the test battery known as smartDOG.
“Each breed showed its own set of strengths and weaknesses,” explained Saara Junttila, a doctoral researcher in canine cognition at the University of Helsinki, in an interview with The Telegraph.
“For example, the Labrador Retriever excels at reading human movements but struggles more with spatial problems,” the researchers note. “Some breeds, like the Shetland Sheepdog, performed fairly evenly across almost all tests, not scoring extremely high or low on any single task.”
“The Belgian Malinois demonstrated strong performance across many cognitive tasks and achieved notably high scores on most of them,” added Katriina Tiira, founder and CEO of smartDOG. “Border collies also did well on a number of tests,” Tiira observed.
The researchers identified the most informative measure of overall intelligence as a logical reasoning task. In the test, dogs were shown two bowls of food and could see that one bowl was empty; the challenge was to deduce that the food lay in the other, covered bowl. The data showed no breed-wide differences in solving this particular problem, suggesting that general patterns of logical reasoning may be similar across breeds.
However, the team then analyzed three tests that isolate distinct facets of canine cognition, revealing clear differences among breeds as a group.
In a V-detour task, dogs had to navigate around a transparent V-shaped fence to reach a visible food reward, providing a partial measure of problem-solving ability. The study also examined how dogs respond to human gestures by testing five cues: continuous pointing, brief pointing, pointing with the paw, pointing while looking away, and following gaze. Researchers tracked how quickly dogs turned to a human for help or tried to solve the task on their own in an unsolvable scenario where the food was locked away in a box.
“Understanding human gestures reflects social cognition,” Junttila commented. “Dogs that perform well on this task show a strong ability to read and interpret human signals.” The unsolvable task also highlighted social tendencies: some breeds consistently sought human help, while others persisted independently. Both patterns can be advantageous in different contexts.
Malinois, champion
Data indicate that the Belgian Malinois ranks first in both human-movement tasks and the V-turn exercise, and it is among the most independent breeds overall. In the general intelligence score, the Malinois earned the top position with 35 points out of a possible 39.
Border Collies upheld their reputation by taking second place with 26 points. Hovawart claimed bronze with 25 points, narrowly edging the Spanish Water Dog by a single point.
Golden Retrievers and Labradors, famed for their empathy, scored highly on gesture tests but did not perform as well on the other two measures, ranking 13th and 9th respectively. The researchers emphasize that evaluating breeds by a single trait or by a single overall score oversimplifies canine intelligence. Instead, it is more informative to identify which breeds excel at particular skills.
Reference work: a study reported in Nature (2022) provides the data and analyses that underlie these conclusions. [Attribution: Nature Research, 2022].
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Note: no contact information is listed here. Data and conclusions reflect the findings of the cited study and independent researchers in the field of canine cognition.