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

Bzzt. Try again

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can teach the dog a few tricks doesn't mean that he actually has understanding of what he is doing. Humans are the only species cabable of understanding.

There is no such thing as a sentient non-homosapien. There may be varying levels of intelligence among the animals, but no animal can reason, they can only react to their surroundings as dictated by their instincts.

Understanding is one thing...

[Elecore]

But what about comprehending MEANING? Computers these days can easily understand the difference between "pepperoni" and "green peppers" when ordering your pizza, but they don't really associate any MEANING to them beyond what we tell them. I'm not saying this dog is amazing, but I would guess humans still have A LOT more brain power underneath the basic understanding of a word. If I say "ball" to the dog, he'd probably recognize his tennis ball. If a 3 year old learns about a tennis ball, then sees a beach ball, most of them will say "BIG BALL!" whereas I bet the dog wouldn't know what the heck that thing is.

obligatory...

[lordvdr]

I for one welcome our border collie overlords.