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June 17, 2009

Astounding

Some dogs learn to understand an impressive number of words, as well. A gifted border collie, Rico, mastered the names of more than 200 objects using a technique called fast-tracking that small children also employ, Juliane Kaminski, also of M.P.I. Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues reported in 2004 in Science. The researchers introduced a novel item into Rico's mix of toys then asked him to retrieve it. He did so by associating the unfamiliar name with the unfamiliar object. He even remembered the name of the toy a month later.

That's amazing. Two hundred sign language words. I've heard that people can teach their dogs 300 spoken words, but I could see that as both exaggerated and / or including a lot of compound words. I once saw a guy at summer camp tell his dog (by name) to go pick a baseball mitt up off the field and bring it to him and it did, all without looking at the mitt, the field, or the dog.

Posted by OneEyedMan at June 17, 2009 11:10 AM

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Posted by: Monk at June 18, 2009 6:18 AM

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