OK, so your dog can learn how to do “sit” or maybe even “paw” after some training and copious amounts of treats, but some hounds—known as “Gifted Word Learners,” or GWLs—are on another level.
Published in the journal Biology Letters, a new study has shown that these uniquely talented dogs can recall the names of toys even after a two-year hiatus with a surprising level of success.
“We know that language by itself relies on a variety of different cognitive skills. We would not be able to learn new languages or even a single language if we were not able to remember what we have learned,” lead researcher Shany Dror told Newsweek.
“Now, this study tells us that while dogs are obviously not able to use language, the ability to remember labels for a very long time is not human specific—it’s something that dogs can do too.”
Max, a GWL dog, with its toys. Even after two years apart, some dogs can remember the names of their toys and retrieve them on command. Max, a GWL dog, with its toys. Even after two years apart, some dogs can remember the names of their toys and retrieve them on command. Cooper Photo
The study began back in 2020, when researchers challenged the dogs’ owners to teach them the names of 12 new toys within a week. As GWLs are so hard to find, they came from a several different countries, including Brazil, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the U.S.
Each owner “speaks” a different language with their dogs, so it was important to make sure none of the toys that were used had names that resembled those already in the dogs’ collections.
“Some of these dogs have over 200 toys, so it was a real challenge when you have six dogs, each with 200 toys and each of them using different languages to make sure none of the names sounded the same,” Dror said.
Remarkably, the dogs succeeded, learning between 11 and 12 new names, all while the tests were streamed live on social media.
After the initial test, the toys were put away, out of the reach of the dogs. Two years later, Dror and her team revisited the experiment to see if the dogs still remembered the names of the toys.
Despite the long gap, four of the five dogs—one dog had sadly passed away in the interim—tested remembered the names of 60 to 75 percent of the toys. As a group, the dogs performance averaged 44 percent correct choices.
“44 percent might not look that high, but because the chance of the dogs getting the toys completely right by coincidence was about 20 percent, you know, 44 percent is still significant,” Dror said.
A GWL dog involved in the study, Whisky, poses with its toy collection. Many GWL dogs can recall and retrieve in excess of 200 toys from a collection. A GWL dog involved in the study, Whisky, poses with its toy collection. Many GWL dogs can recall and retrieve in excess of 200 toys from a collection. Helge O. Svela
“We know that dogs can remember events for at least 24 hours and odors for up to one year, but this is the first study showing that some talented dogs can remember words for at least two years,” head of the research group, Claudia Fugazza, said in a statement.
Not all dogs are capable of such a feat, however. In fact, GWLs are incredibly rare. Dror explained that after five years of hunting around the world, they have only managed to find around 40—yet they need more for their future studies into these remarkable pooches.
If you think your dog could be one of the remarkable few, you can get in touch with the Genius Dog Challenge team via email, Facebook or Instagram. Dror added, “We encourage any owner that thinks their dogs are remembering their toys to contact us because we are always searching for more of these special dogs.”
But how would you know if your dog is a GWL? Unlike training most dogs to sit, stay or roll over, GWLs learn almost by accident, Dror said.
“That’s the interesting thing. Most owners when we found them didn’t intentionally train their dogs the names of their toys—they just kind of picked up on the names.
“The normal process for one of these dogs would be that the owner gets some toys and they give them to their dogs and say the name as they play with the dog. And then one day they say the name of the toy and the dog shows up with it in their mouth.
“Once they show the ability to learn these toys, it happens super fast, and it seems to be very important for the dogs to be able to play with the owners,” she said.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about dogs? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
References
Dror, S., Miklósi, Á., & Fugazza, C. (2024) Dogs with a vocabulary of object labels retain them for at least 2 years. Biology Letters, 20(8). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0208
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