Dogs are stupid

1. Dogs got domestic The pooch drooling on the sofa may look less impressive than a wolf howling at the moon, and for years people assumed that domestication dulled an animal"s intelligence because they couldn"t survive in the wilderness as well as their wild relatives. However, we now know that far from making dogs dumber, domestication gave them a very special kind of intelligence " they communicate and interact with us in ways that are similar to human infants. This social savvy has made them the most successful mammal on the planet, besides us. 2. Dogs are fluent in body language We often take it for granted that a quick point of our fingers, or even feet, can send dogs scampering in the direction of a lost ball or a hidden morsel of food, but this ability is extremely specialized. Even one of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, cannot read our gestures as well as dogs can. In the same way that pre-verbal infants start paying attention to adults when they point, dogs understand that when we gesture, we are trying to cooperate and communicate with them. 3. Dogs are smart enough to at least look guilty It"s the classic technique of clueless husbands " look apologetic even if you have no idea what you"ve done wrong. Seems like dogs use the same strategy. In a study by Alexandra Horowitz of Banard College, if an owner was told their dog had been disobedient, whether or not it was actually true, the dog always showed "guilty" behavior. Although dogs may not actually feel guilt, they are smart enough to react to cues like a glowering glare or a disapproving voice. 4. Dogs have an extensive vocabulary Dogs may be capable of memorizing a Shakespearean sonnet after all " or at least one made up of nouns. A few clever dogs have learned the names of hundreds of objects, sometimes after hearing the name just once. Julianne Kaminski from Portsmouth University found that a dog called Rico learned new words similarly to the way children learn new words. Not long after, a dog called Chaser memorized the names of over a thousand objects! 5. Dogs follow the nice guy While we are occasionally advised to be the "top dog" and dominate our dogs in order to win respect and obedience, it seems that dogs don"t follow a leader who acts like the big bad wolf. While some feral dog groups (dogs who live without human interference) have a dominance hierarchy that predicts priority to resources such as food and mating partners, this hierarchy is not as strict as in wolves. In feral dogs, the pack does not follow the most dominant dog, instead they follow the dog with the most friends. 6. Too smart to obey If you think your dog won"t obey you because they are stupid, think again. In a study by Christine Schwab from the University of Vienna, dogs decided how obedient to be, depending on what their owners could and couldn"t see. For instance, dogs were more likely to obey when their owner was looking directly at them, than when their owner was in exactly the same position but reading a book. This ability to distinguish between such a subtle difference in body language is quite impressive, and shows that dogs are not above using their genius to get their own way.