Dog Trained on 200-Word Vocabulary

An anonymous reader writes "The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is reporting in Science Magazine today on an example of successful human to non-human communication: Rico, a collie trained on a vocabulary of 200 words. Their conclusion is that 'brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans...[Rico has a] retrieval rate comparable to the performance of three-year-old toddlers'. In case you ever wondered if your dog understands what you are saying, Rico 'can learn the names of unfamiliar toys after just one exposure to the new word-toy combination.'"

Comments

Can not only learn new Words, but do exclusion ID

[CharonX]

I saw an report on this on TV
The totally amazing thing was that the dog could not only learn new Words rather fast, but also pick up an Toy he had not known in the past.
How it worked?

He knew all the other toys, and was smart enough (after being told "No" one, two times, when he reached a false one) that he was supposed to pick up a toy with a name he could not associate. Ruling out all Toys he knew he went to the new Toy - which is the same thing 3 year olds can do.