dogs are humans best friends they can do
so many amazing things
like tricks dogs are great at learning
tricks they can learn things like
sit roll give me your paw come but we
still don't really know what they're
thinking
i mean we've done so many studies with
dogs mri studies behavioral studies and
we still don't know what they're
thinking
so i guess we're going to have to go
through and find out
welcome to animal iq everyone i'm trace
dominguez science communicator
extraordinaire
hi i'm natalia i'm a doctoral researcher
and science communicator and when it's
not a global pandemic i
spend my time in southern africa
researching the evolution of sociality
and cognition in large carnivores mainly
big cats
here on animal iq we go inside the minds
of animals to try and better understand
just how they tick most animal cognition
experts hesitate to directly compare
animals
because every animal is unique and each
species values different things
have different social motivations
evolutionary advantages and
rationalizations
but luckily for you we compiled the
existing research into this
handy cognition rubric to try and make
sense of what we know
about different species in every episode
we try to answer just how intelligent an
animal is
using our domains of intelligence we
have social
ecological rational awareness plus an
x factor to determine how intelligent an
animal might seem
even if we can't quite put our thumb on
it intelligence is a complicated metric
it's not just difficult to measure it's
tricky to quantify and if you think
about it we're not even very good at
measuring intelligence in ourselves
right
we can talk to ourselves let alone
measuring that intelligence
in animals right how do we even know
what an animal is thinking
things like behavior can give us clues
and their brain can also give us clues
as to what's going on inside an animal's
head and we'll be looking at
both behavior and brains size doesn't
always matter when it comes to
intelligence but when it comes to
executive function or control of
behavior
brain size can be a factor that helps us
measure intelligence
specifically the number of neurons and
brain size relative to body size or
encephalization
quotient the eq of humans is 7.5 that's
really good
dogs today's episode animal they are 1.2
humans are just way more encephalized
what a fun word
i don't think that's how that term works
right right that's definitely true
the point here is that some animals have
a higher eq
than others it's not an end-all be-all
number but it can give us some
perspective think of it
kind of like a bmi for the brain mris
are another way that we can figure out
what's going on inside a dog's head
in fact researchers put dogs inside an
mri
and found out that dogs love us and not
just for our food
in some dogs the reward center would
light up even more for praise from their
human
compared to food although i think my dog
probably would be about equal between
praise and food i think i would take
as much as food that seems pretty good
for me
this week we're testing humankind's best
friend the canis familiaris
dogs come in all shapes and sizes but
genetically they can all be traced back
to wolves these beautiful buddies were
domesticated between 20 and 40
000 years ago before humans had learned
agriculture
you know metal working we were truly
these primitive
animals but we had this tool the dog
right because of this long shared
history we've bred these animals to
live alongside us their brains even have
a whole section that exists
just to process human faces dogs are
even smart enough to understand
social cues from people researchers know
this because they gave dogs a test to
see if they could read a human body
language
what they did is they took two cups they
put treats in one cup and the other cup
was empty
and in order to figure out which cup had
the treats the dog had to follow either
the gaze of a human
or the human would point and in fact
dogs could follow these social cues if a
human pointed at the cup
the dog would go to the cup with the
treat that the human was pointing at
they did better on this task than
chimpanzees and perform similar to human
babies
that's actually amazing right in other
mri studies where
dogs are shown pictures of their humans
and their dog friends
as well as stranger humans and stranger
dogs the familiar dogs sparked
different activity in their brains
that means that they know what they were
looking at as well as who they were
looking at which is an excellent
social measure that said when it comes
to raw problem solving some experts
would argue that dogs they just don't
perform as well as wolves
even though the dog does seem really
smart to us perhaps that has to do with
our shared evolutionary path
for more on dog's rational and awareness
scores though we wanted to bring in an
expert so we called dr lori santos at
yale's
canine cognition center when we look at
modern day wolves they're incredibly
smart about problem solving right they
throw lots of different strategies at a
puzzle box to try to figure out how to
solve it
but dogs have developed a different
strategy that both makes them look
smarter than wolves
and not as smart as wolves they give up
pretty quickly and then try a new
strategy
that new strategy is to turn to humans
for help and so
in some ways dog's own personal
cognition might have gotten
quote unquote dumber over evolutionary
time but
this domestication process has allowed
dogs to use a new strategy a social one
that might be ultimately much more
effective dogs are very good boys and
girls at what they've been bred to do
they can follow human orders there are
companions they're social
they even know how to cooperate with us
researchers gave dogs a task where they
had to work with a human or a dog
partner
to pull on a string and bring a trait
close and in fact dogs were able to not
just work with a dog partner to
cooperate
but they cooperate with humans so that's
a big check mark in the social box for
both dogs and their people
so one of the great things about being a
human is that we're really good at
cooperation you know we do this so
naturally
in the way we teach other individuals
information
in the way we learn information from
other individuals just in the way we
cooperate with language
and this is the spot where i think dogs
really excel in cooperation with humans
even chimpanzees are really bad at this
if you stick chimpanzees in a study
where you have a human
pointing to one location trying to help
a chimpanzee to find food
chimpanzees are really bad at this but
if you put a dog in the very same
situation
all of a sudden dogs get it on the very
first trial they know if you're pointing
at something
they really tend to want to use the
information we're cooperatively
providing
they can even understand thousands of
commands
i mean they just keep getting those
points and social right one border
collie can allegedly understand up to a
thousand different words
but just because they can associate the
sounds with the actions
that doesn't mean that dogs understand
english they don't understand grammar
right
they just understand what that sound
means and how that sound means to do
that
thing grab that toy you know get up get
down that kind of thing
right this is classic behavioral
training using rewards and praise as
treats
to elicit the behavior that we want from
a dog and this also requires learning
and memory
yeah so how smart are dogs they seem
pretty darn smart to us especially when
it comes to interacting
with us right they communicate they
cooperate they have pretty high ratings
and self-control
and problem solving they're okay at
understanding how they affect the world
around them
but they're not so great at using tools
or grasping higher concepts of
self-awareness
yeah so many people wonder whether or
not dogs have kind of conscious
awareness
but this is a bit of a puzzle right
because it requires asking dogs about
their subjective experience
and so to ask researchers have to get
really creative
and often that creativity to really get
an awareness it's honestly very tough
because we can look at a dog's behavior
but the problem is that it's hard to
know that their behavior
matches some sort of conscious awareness
and for the x factor our long history
has really shaped how we see dogs and
also how dogs
interact with us their unique bond with
humans and their ability to understand
our social cues
makes them a really interesting species
to study and raises
all kinds of questions like are these
cognitive abilities unique to dogs
are the result of domestication more
research is needed as i like to say
and we have done a lot of research on
dogs they are pretty intelligent but
i think because we know so much we
should put the x factor you know
pretty high what do you think natalia
yeah i would say it's pretty high
they're just such a unique species with
our shared history
in case it isn't obvious these are our
ratings they're not the views of all
scientists or even every study out there
it's you know more complicated than that
intelligence is a complicated metric
it's difficult to measure and tricky to
quantify so it might be a while before
we really understand
how intelligent our best friends are but
in the meantime we can settle for their
companionship
because we're so in sync with dogs
they're involved in a lot of different
behavior and intelligence studies but
there is a similar animal that we
thought might be cool to go over next
the fox tune in next time to know more
our expert for this one
so cool what do y'all think we should
cover next other than foxes do you have
any other ideas of animals that you
think our intelligence measures might do
well with
let us know down in the comments is your
dog super smart you should let us know
that too
my cat's not so food motivated but maybe
your dog is let us know that in the
comments as well and thank you so much
for watching animal iq we will see you
next time
you