What are the smartest dogs? Here is the ranking by Science

The University of Helsinki in Finland wanted to find out which is the smartest dog breed in the world. So he evaluated a thousand specimens with ten different performance tests and ranked the “best performers”, the results of which were published in Nature Scientific Reports.

As we know, the character of dogs has nothing to do with breed. But there are some skills and traits that undoubtedly have a genetic origin. And that’s what the scientists rely on. We already knew that small breeds are the most aggressive, but what about intelligence and cognitive performance?

There is no doubt: the “most talented” are the Belgian Malinois, a Belgian Shepherd often chosen as a police dog, which received 35 out of 39 points. Australian Kelpies, Labrador Retrievers, Border Collies and Golden Retrievers follow in the ranking list. Sixth place for the Hovawarts, followed by Spanish Water Dogs, Shetland Sheepdogs, English Cocker Spaniels, Australian Shepherds, Mixed Breeds, German Shepherds and Finnish Lapphunds.

Tests included the ability to “read” human gestures and problem-solving for a tasty reward. The researchers also looked at how independent a dog was and how quickly it turned to a human when faced with an impossible task.

“Most breeds had their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Labrador Retriever was very good at reading human gestures but not so good at solving spatial problems. Some breeds, like the Shetland Sheepdog, scored high on almost every test performed fairly consistently,” explains Dr. Katriina Tiira. “The Belgian Malinois excelled on many of the cognitive tasks and scored very well on most tests.” And you, do you agree with that ranking?

***

Continue to follow La Zampa Facebook (click here), Instagram (click here) and Twitter (click here)

Don’t miss the best LaZampa news and stories, Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter (click here)

subjects