Get the latest Science News and Discoveries

Dogs can tell how toys work without any training


Gifted dogs can categorize toys by function, not just appearance. In playful at-home tests, they linked labels like “fetch” and “pull” to toys—even ones they’d never seen before. The findings hint that dogs form mental concepts of objects, much like humans, pointing to deeper cognitive abilities.

None

Get the Android app

Or read this on ScienceDaily

Read more on:

Photo of DOGS

DOGS

Photo of Toys

Toys

Photo of training

training

Related news:

News photo

Dogs with Large Vocabularies Can Understand Category Words, Not Just Names

News photo

With no prior training, dogs can infer how similar types of toys work, even when they don’t look alike - EurekAlert!

News photo

Tug or fetch? Some dogs sort toys by how they are used