Some Dogs Can Learn New Linguistic Tricks

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IF You are a human holding a hammer, everything can look like a nail. But what happens if you are a dog holding a soft duck toy in your mouth?

New research suggests that some dogs may have a surprisingly nuanced understanding of the essence of this toy – and what it could be better used for.

From an early age, we, humans, learn to categorize objects by function, not just appearance. The category of things we put in warm can include a variety of things: coats, hats, mittens, even thick socks. It is a big cognitive leap in learning what a hat is. And most non -human animals who learn to understand people’s words seem to correspond to a single word with an object or an action: ball, duck, sit, walk.

But some dogs, called “learners of gifted words”, turned out to remember the names of a large number of different objects. For example, a Border Collie named Rico made the headlines two decades ago when he demonstrated an impressive reminder of more than 200 different articles. But at the time, researchers wondered if Rico learned words in the same way to young humans. “When a child learns a word, he learns that he refers to a category of things”, Yale University Psychologist Paul Bloom said Science at the time. Did Rico do the same?

It is a big cognitive leap in learning what a hat is.

The new study, published in Current biologyseems to indicate an answer. Dogs like Rico, suggest the results, can not only integrate objects into the categories according to the visual appearance, but also group them according to their functions.

For the study, the researchers identified seven dogs who naturally obtained the status of learning words simply by play in their own house. (For those who keep the scoring, it was six border collies and a blue heel.) The team visited dogs in humans to teach canines two words of “category” in which different toys could be grouped. As examples, the researchers used “recover” – for toys used to recover the game – and “sweater” – for toys that would be used for the war against war. The toys in each category seemed radically different from each other, but the dogs quickly resumed on the game with each function.

Then came the real test. The researchers have introduced new unknown toys with a variety of appearances. Then asked the dogs to select a “Recover” toy or a toy “Take” the new selection of Playphings. And most of the time, these seven dogs have done things well.

“These dogs do not only memorize object names,” Claudia Fugazza, animal behavior researcher at Eötvös Loránd in Budapest and author of the main study in a statement. “They sufficiently understand the meaning of these labels to apply them to new very different toys – recognizing what the toys were used for.”

Other non -human animals have been able to acquire this capacity, but generally only in the context of rigorous laboratory training, noted the researchers. Thus, the new canine discovery “shows that the classification linked to verbal labels can emerge in non-human and non-linguistic species living in natural environments,” said Adam Miklósi, also animal behavior in Eötvös Loránd University and Study co-author, in a press release. “It opens up new exciting ways to study how language-related skills can evolve and operate beyond our own species.”

In the meantime, do not worry if the dogs of your life are always perplexed on the difference between their Ducky and Dragon toys. Although the appearance and personality of our dogs can tend to resemble that of their owner, research has not said anything about their intelligence.

Main image: Julia Zavishina / Shutterstock

• Katherine Harmon Courage

  Published on September 18, 2025

  Katherine Harmon Courage is the editor -in -chief of Nautilus.