Dogs With 'Extremely Rare' Skill More Playful Than Others, Study Finds

Is your dog gifted? A team of researchers has found that canines with a certain "extremely rare" skill are also more playful than other dogs.

Dogs that are considered Gifted Word Learners (GWL) have a rather unique skill, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), noted in a news release. These are the dogs that can actually learn multiple object names rather quickly and even remember the ones they have already learned for more than two months.

"This skill is exceptional and manifests only in very few individual dogs within the whole population," the researchers wrote in their paper published in Animal Cognition. "While the vast majority of dogs struggle to learn even a few object names, the rare gifted individuals can rapidly learn multiple words without formal training, showing the ability to learn novel words in only 4 exposures, learning at least 12 novel words in a week and remembering those for at least 2 months without practice."

For their study, the researchers looked at whether there are differences in the personality of these gifted dogs and typical dogs, or the ones that don't possess this skill. As the researchers explained, there have been suggestions of a connection between playfulness and problem-solving skills in humans, so they wanted to see whether there is a link between dogs' personality traits and being a GWL.

To get the answers they needed, the researchers gave the Dog Personality Questionnaire to the owners of three groups of Border collies: 21 GWL dogs, 43 Hungarian dogs and 101 Austrian dogs. This test is a "validated" questionnaire that reveals dogs' personality traits, study co-author Borbala Turcsan of ELTE explained in the news release.

They focused solely on Border collies because the "majority of dogs showing the exceptional skill of learning object names" belong to this breed. It's worth noting, however, that this "extremely rare" ability is considered rare even among Border collies. Furthermore, there are also other breeds that possess it, ELTE noted.

Indeed, the researchers found that GWL dogs are actually more playful than typical dogs. Even though Border collies are already quite playful since they are working dogs, gifted Border collies were found to be even more playful.

"As expected, we found that the gifted Border collies were rated as more playful than both the Hungarian and Austrian typical ones," the researchers wrote. "Our results suggest that an extremely high level of Playfulness is associated with giftedness in a specific cognitive trait in dogs: the capacity to learn object verbal labels, thus opening new possibilities for comparative research on the relationship between giftedness and personality."

They did not claim, however, that there is a causal relationship between exaggerated playfulness and giftedness in dogs. Furthermore, their playfulness may also be "perceived by the owners as a result of frequent playful interactions with their dogs, with named toys," study co-author Ádám Miklósi of ELTE said, as per the news release.

But as the university noted, GWL is "very rare" in dogs, and understanding our dogs can also help us "understand ourselves."

Those whose dogs know the name of more than 10 objects may apply for the Genius Dog Challenge via this form. Application entails answering a few important questions and sending a video demonstrating the dog's capability.