A few months ago, researchers identified a handful of dogs that are astonishingly fast at learning the names of toys. These “genius dogs” were found to have the ability to learn the names of hundred of toys, and have since become the focus of many scientific studies.
A new study featuring these gifted canines throws light on a dog behavior that we often write off as an amusing quirk – ‘head-tilting’. Researchers studied the occurrence and direction of head-tilts in response to commands by their owners to fetch specific toys.
In the study, dog owners initially trained their dogs to learn the names of two toys. Owners of both genius dogs and ordinary dogs were given three months to teach their dogs the toys’ names. The dogs’ ability to recognize toys were tested at the end of each month. During tests, owners asked the dogs to bring one of the two toys by saying its name (e.g. “bring rope!”).
“All owners applied the same training protocol and received the same instructions during weekly training sessions with a dog trainer.”
Unsurprisingly, at the end of the training, only the genius dogs were able to consistently bring the correct toy from the pair. Surprisingly, this was not the only notable distinction between genius dogs and the rest. Genius dogs tilted their heads significantly more often compared to typical dogs during tests.
While ordinary dogs tilted their heads in 2% of the trials, genius dogs did so in 43% of them! Researchers think that head-tilting is a clue to what makes these dogs so successful at learning the names of toys. They propose that genius dogs might have tilted their heads more than ordinary dogs because the commands were more meaningful to them (they had learned the labels of the toys). According to researchers, it could also be a sign that genius dogs were paying a lot more attention to what was being said by heir owner.
“We suggest that the difference in the dogs’ behaviour might be related to hearing meaningful words (for the genius dogs) and could be a sign of increased attention.”
In all trials, dogs were facing the owners when performing a head-tilt. Furthermore, all dogs in the study consistently tilted their heads in one direction or the other, suggesting that direction of head-tilt is a stable individual trait.
Read more about the study by Andrea Sommese, Ádám Miklósi, Ákos Pogány, Andrea Temesi, Shany Dror, and Claudia Fugazza here.
