You have a dog, of course you love it very much - but have you ever wondered how smart it is?
Well, if you have a Belgian Malinois, then know that according to a new study, this is the dog with the highest intelligence in the world.
In a study conducted by the University of Helsinki in Finland, researchers assessed the intelligence of 1,000 dogs from 13 representative breeds of service dogs, using a test that included 7 tasks and three behavioral tasks.
The tests included testing the dogs' ability to read human gestures as well as testing the animals' ability to obtain food that was surrounded by a transparent V-shaped fence, the dog's independence and also how quickly the animal turned to the help of its owner in the event that it had to deal with an insoluble task, such as reaching the food that was inside a box sealed
In all of these tests, the Belgian shepherds received 35 points out of a possible 39, while the border collies who came in second place received only 26 points out of the 39.
The German Wauwart dogs came in third place with 25 points.
Dogs at Beit Yanai beach, in 2021, photo: Yonatan Shaul
Dr. Katrina Tierra, the editors of the study, said that "the Belgian shepherd stood out in many of the cognitive tasks with very good results in most tests." Researcher Sierra Juntilla, the author of the study and a doctoral student, added that "most breeds had their own strengths and weaknesses.
The Labrador retriever breed, for example, was very good at reading human gestures, but not so good at solving spatial problems.
There were also breeds such as the Shetland Sheepdog that received an equal score in almost all the tests."
The researchers noted that the dogs tested in the intelligence test were those that are suitable for activity with humans, meaning that they do not have overly aggressive traits.
Also, dogs between the ages of one and eight years were chosen for the study, and this was to examine dogs that had already reached maturity in terms of intelligence and had not aged too much, so that certain abilities had already begun to deteriorate in them.
Dogs (illustration), photo: Getty Images
Includes a food mission
As part of the tests, the dogs had to deal with a reality where they were shown two food bowls, one empty and the other full of food - but with it covered.
The test was to see if the dog could find the food in the covered bowl.
From the point of view of the team of researchers, dealing with such a problem is a good measure of the animals' intelligence, but in practice it turned out that precisely in this task there was no significant difference between the different breeds of dogs in relation to dealing with the task.
However, in a test of three different tasks that each tested a different aspect of the dogs' cognition, the various differences between the breeds became clear.
One of the tasks was the task of bypassing a transparent V-shaped fence, and this in order to access the food that is behind it.
Here there was a significant difference between the varieties in relation to the success of solving the problem.
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