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Study reveals the smartest dog breed—and it's not the one you might expect

Move over, border collies, there's a new top dog in town.

Photo by Anthony Duran on Unsplash

Belgian Malinois, the smartest dog breed.

If you Google "smartest dog breeds," most lists you'll find put border collies in the No. 1 spot, followed in some order by poodles, German shepherds and golden retrievers.

But a 2023 study of canine cognition from the University of Helsinki puts a whole different breed at the top of the ladder—one that most of us have probably seen before but haven't heard the name of—the Belgian Malinois.

Best known as a police or security dog, the Belgian Malinois is a shepherd breed that looks very similar to a German shepherd. Both breeds are of similar height and coloring, but the Malinois is lighter weight and its ears are more triangular-shaped, according to the American Kennel Club.

So what is it that makes the Belgian Malinois more intelligent than other dog breeds?

File:Belgian Malinois Male Puppy.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

The study published in Scientific Reports analyzed 1,002 dogs from 13 different breeds using a battery of smartDOG cognition tests. These tests involve food reward tasks that determine a dog's capacity for memory, problem-solving, impulse control, reading human gestures, copying human behavior and logical reasoning. Despite a wide field of research on dogs, according to the study, only a handful of studies have examined cognition of specific breeds instead of breed groups. Additionally, not much empirical research has been done on nonsocial cognitive traits such as memory, inhibitory control, spatial problem-solving and logical reasoning—all of which were covered in this study.

The researchers identified a few different tests as signifying high intelligence. For the most significant measure of intelligence, logical reasoning, the study revealed no significant difference between the dog breeds. So the three tests the authors singled out instead for measuring and comparing intelligence, according to The Telegraph, were:

- A V-detour test, in which a dog had to detour around a transparent V-shaped fence to get to a food reward, showing some problem-solving ability.

- A human gesture reading test, in which a dog's response to five gestures—constant pointing, brief pointing, pointing with the foot, pointing at something while facing another direction and following a human's gaze—was measured.

- An unsolvable task test, in which a dog tries to access food in an unopenable box, measuring independence and how quickly a dog asked a human for help.

The Belgian Malinois scored 35 out of a possible 39 points on these three tasks, making it the top scorer for high intelligence overall. Border collies came in second with 26 points and hovawarts came in third at 25 points.

brown and black german shepherd lying on white and gray area rugPhoto by Gerrie van der Walt on Unsplash

The study authors point out that there are strengths and weaknesses in most breeds. Some score very high on some tests and very low on others. Some breeds saw middle-of-the-road scores across most tests.

According to IFLScience, one weakness the Malinois showed was in the cylinder test, in which a dog is taught to retrieve a piece of food from inside an opaque cylinder. The opaque cylinder then gets replaced with a transparent one to see if the dog will go around to the end of the cylinder to retrieve the treat, as it did with the opaque one, or try to go directly through the side of the cylinder to get to it. This test measures inhibition, and the Malinois scored among the lowest of all breeds on it.

Every dog has its bright and dim spots, but it's clear why the Malinois is a dog of choice for security work. High intelligence, of course, but even being low on inhibition can be seen as a plus for a working dog that needs to be highly responsive and act quickly when needed.

“The Belgian Shepherd Malinois stood out in many of the cognitive tasks, having very good results in a majority of the tests,” study author and owner and CEO of smartDOG Dr. Katriina Tiira told The Telegraph.

“Border Collies also performed well in many of the tests," she added.

From Your Site Articles

Joy

A major UCLA study says that at least 65 species of animals laugh

If you've never seen a fox giggle, you're in for a treat.

SaveAFox/YouTube

Foxes giggle like children on helium.

Laughter is one of the most natural impulses in humans. Most babies start to laugh out loud at around 3 to 4 months, far earlier than they are able to speak or walk. Expressing enjoyment or delight comes naturally to us, but we're not the only creatures who communicate with giggles.

Researchers at UCLA have identified 65 species of animals who make "play vocalizations," or what we would consider laughter. Some of those vocalizations were already well documented—we've known for a while that apes and rats laugh—but others may come as a surprise. Along with a long list of primate species, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, mongooses and three bird species are prone to laughter as well. (Many bird species can mimic human laughter, but that's not the same as making their own play vocalizations.)

Primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student Sasha Winkler and UCLA professor of communication Greg Bryant shared their findings in an article in the journal Bioacoustics.

The authors explored various play vocalization sounds, recording them as noisy or tonal, loud or quiet, high- or low-pitched, short or long, a single call or rhythmic pattern.

But really, what we want to see is what animal laughter sounds like from various species, right? While the researchers said that it can be hard to document laughter in the wild, especially among animals with quieter vocalizations, we do have some examples captured on video.

Check out these foxes laughing like little kids:

Or maybe little kids on helium. How fun is that?

Ever seen a bonobo chimp laugh? Just as cute.

I'm not sure if tickling a baby bonobo is sweet or torturous, though these researchers surely know what they're doing. It's always delightful to see the instinctual playfulness of primates.

Laughter in some animals isn't as audibly apparent as it is in these foxes and chimps, though. Researchers from Humboldt University of Berlin found that rats laugh when they are tickled—and appear to enjoy tickling, as they seek it out—but their vocalizations are ultrasonic, so it's hard to hear them without special instruments.

The UCLA researchers shared that the study of laughter in animals can help us better understand our own evolutionary behavior.

“This work lays out nicely how a phenomenon once thought to be particularly human turns out to be closely tied to behavior shared with species separated from humans by tens of millions of years,” Bryant said, according to UCLA.

“When we laugh, we are often providing information to others that we are having fun and also inviting others to join,” Winkler said. “Some scholars have suggested that this kind of vocal behavior is shared across many animals who play, and as such, laughter is our human version of an evolutionarily old vocal play signal.”

Raise your hand if you just want to see a cow laughing for real now.

This article first appeared on 1.14.22

From Your Site Articles

animals

Innovation

Researchers have come up with a more accurate way to calculate your dog's age

Photo by Bharathi Kannan on Unsplash

The age-old wisdom holds that a dog ages seven years for every single human year. Well, it turns out the age-old wisdom has some catching up to do. That's because scientists are now claiming that the way dogs actually age is more complex than we humans have previously thought.

Researchers at the University of California now claim that dogs rapidly age in their first two years of existence, quickly evolving from puppies to the equivalent of human middle age. They then experience a rapid slowing of the aging process in their DNA until much later in life.

Photo by Bharathi Kannan on

It would be the equivalent of going from our mid-teens to age 40 almost overnight and then staying there for the next 35 or so years of our lives before our DNA began to rapidly deteriorate as our body prepared for death. From the Smithsonian:

"According to the formula, a 2-year-old dog is the equivalent of a 42-year-old human, but things slow down after that. A 5-year-old dog is the equivalent of a 56.75 year old human, and a 10-year-old dog is the equivalent of 67.8-year-old person."

It turns out the old 7 dogs years to 1 human year calculation was debunked by scientists several years ago. In fact, no one really knows where it originates from. They just know there's no real science behind it.

Related: A blind man in a Facebook group asked people to describe their dogs and it's the sweetest post ever

Photo by ipet photo on

However, in some ways, the old seven-year-measurement isn't that far off, according to the new research. That's because of the DNA of the labradors in the study showed the equivalent of a 68-year-old's DNA by the time they were 10. So, in some ways, the folksy wisdom that's held true for ages is pretty much aligned with cutting edge research.

From the Smithsonian: "[T]he comparison breaks down after early puppyhood. The dog clock ticks much faster with pups speeding through puberty and reaching sexual maturity within their first year. Then, the dog's epigenetic clock slows down as the dog ages, and begins to match up with humans again in its later years. Overall, the average 12-year lifespan of a Labrador lined up with the average worldwide lifespan of humans, which is about 70 years."

Photo by Lydia Torrey on

If you really want to figure out how old your beloved dog is, the Smithsonian has incorporated the University of California research into a calculator. Although veterinarians and other scientists point out that dog breeds, sizes and general health factors all have a significant impact on dog's life span.

But there's good news there, too. The University of California study is far from the only project looking into dog aging and health. A major project led by the University of Washington called the "Dog Aging Project" is looking not only into dog health issues but how to eventually increase a dog's overall lifespan. Because most of us can agree that the only correct answer to the question "how long will my dog live?" is "Forever."

From Your Site Articles

A stunning photo project shows how dogs age through the years ... ›

animal research

Study reveals the smartest dog breed—and it's not the one you might expect

Move over, border collies, there's a new top dog in town.

A major UCLA study says that at least 65 species of animals laugh

If you've never seen a fox giggle, you're in for a treat.

Researchers have come up with a more accurate way to calculate your dog's age

Related: A blind man in a Facebook group asked people to describe their dogs and it's the sweetest post ever

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