A canine IQ test has been developed at the University of Edinburgh, led by Rosalind Arden, a research associate at the London School of Economics. It can be used to figure out if your puppy really is smarter than any other dog you've played with, but it's also going to have some real implications on human health science, reported The Independent.
"Dogs are one of the few animals that reproduce many of the key features of dementia. So, understanding their cognitive abilities could be valuable in helping us to understand the causes of this disorder in humans and possibly test treatments for it," said Arden, reported CNN.
The test was carried out on 68 border collies all raised in the same situation, and they found that they do indeed show a large variation in cleverness, just like humans, reported The Daily Mail. The dogs that did the tasks more quickly also tended to complete them more accurately.
Dogs are much "purer" subjects than humans when it comes to studying brain function, because they don't come from different classes with different access to education, and they also don't have access to brain-dulling substances like drugs and alcohol.
"So if, as our research suggests, dog intelligence is structured similarly to ours, studying a species that doesn't smoke, drink, use recreational drugs and does not have large differences in education and income, may help us understand this link between intelligence and health better," Arden said, according to CNN.
The dogs were given a series of cognitive tasks, like going through mazes to find food or figuring out which portion of food contained more than the other, reported The Daily Mail.
Mark Adams is a research fellow who helped with the study. "This is only a first step, but we are aiming to create a dog IQ test that is reliable, valid and can be administered quickly. Such a test could rapidly improve our understanding of the connection between dog intelligence, health, even lifespan, and be the foundation of 'dognitive epidemiology,'" he said, reported The Daily Mail. He said that dogs were great to work with because they were happy and excited to do the tasks.
Watch below as Arden talks about the study, and get to know a very clever French bulldog in a video uploaded by Sophia Tran-Thompson.
