Dog with a 1022 word vocabulary

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PitterPatter

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In the paper this morning a story about a border collie with a 1022 word vocabulary. In three years her vocabulary includes 800 cloth animals, 116 balls, 26 flying discs and a medley of plastic items.

The owner had to write the name of the toy on each item with a marker. The dog apparently has a better memory than the owner.

Can you imagine the size of the toy box?
 
Wow, that would be a LOT of toys! Nellie has a fuzzy ball that kind of looks like sheepskin. If we say Baa-aaa---llll a few times she'll go find it.:biggrin2:
 
I watched an excellent episode of Horizon (British documentary series) a while back called "The Secret Life of The Dog", which featured a Border Collie who also had large vocabulary. This dog was also able to retrieve toys just by being shown an identical toy. But the really impressive thing was when showed her a photograph of the toy and she still fetched the right one. She was able to comprehend a 2D representation of a toy and associate it with the real object.

Found the clip on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfRfE7UjpHk
 
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I actually just saw this on TV - I think it was from PBS, about animal intelligence. The dog is a Border Collie (natch) named Chaser. They tested her with her own toys, then they put a brand new toy in the pile and asked her to find "Darwin", a name she hadn't heard before. She did it!

You should have seen her head cock when they said "Find Darwin" the first time! You could just see the wheels spinning in her head! :lol:

It was really impressive. (And a gorgeous dog, too!)

Sharon
 
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