The smartest dog breed has been found, and it’s not the border collie.
Researchers recently assessed the cognitive ability of different dog breeds and came up with some surprising results.
Despite the public perception that border collies are the most intelligent dog breed, they only came second in this study.
The world’s most intelligent dog breed
Belgian Shepherds were found to be the smartest dogs in the world, according to the study. Measuring intelligence is a complex process, as there are differences in intellectual ability even within dog breeds.
That’s why more than 1000 dogs took part in the study, which tested their problem-solving skills, strategy, ability to read human gestures, self-control, behavior, memory and logic.
“Most breeds had their own strengths and weaknesses,” Saara Junttila, the study’s author, told The Telegraph. “For example, the Labrador Retriever was very good at reading human gestures, but not so good at spatial problem-solving ability. Some breeds, such as the Shetland Sheepdog, scored quite evenly in almost all tests, i.e., they had neither very high nor very low scores for any test.”
Border collies were also included in the study and scored well on most tests, but they were outperformed by Belgian shepherds by 9 points, scoring 35 out of a maximum of 39. They are very good navigators, have excellent problem-solving skills and can interpret human gestures almost perfectly; no wonder they are often used as search dogs.
Although the results are very interesting, the researchers should not draw any firm conclusions, as the studied dogs are not representative of the entire dog population. Nevertheless, the experiment may contribute to future research into the behaviors of different dog breeds.