Experts considered more than 1,000 dogs from 13 different breeds on their competence in mental and behavioral tasks.
Belgian Malinois, also known as Belgian Shepherd, was declared the- most intelligent dog by scientists from the University of Helsinki in Finland. More than 1,000 dogs from 13 different breeds competed against each other in 10 tasks and were considered by experts who created the smartDOG battery of tests.
The study was published in Nature Scientific Reports. The experts analyzed exploratory behavior, social cognition, impulsivity, spatial problem-solving, logical reasoning, and short-term memory.
Saara Junttila, study author and Ph.D. researcher in canine cognition at the University of Helsinki, said that most breeds have their strengths and weaknesses. Citing an example, Ms. Junttila said, “For example, the Labrador Retriever was very good at reading human gestures, but not so good at spatial problem-solving ability. On the other hand, some breeds, such as the Shetland Sheepdog, scored quite evenly in almost all tests, i.e., they had neither very high nor very low scores for any test.”
The test revealed that the Belgian Shepherd Malinois stood out in many cognitive tasks, having excellent results in most of the tests, study author Dr. Katriina Tiira, the owner and chief executive of smartDOG, shared.
Ms. Tiira added, “Border Collies also performed well in many tests. We expected that breeds would differ in most traits, and they did. This was well visible for testers doing the smartDOG testing in practice breeds, had typical cognitive profiles in the test.”
In the logical reasoning round, the dogs were shown two food bowls and saw one empty bowl. The experts wanted to analyze if the dogs could infer the food was in the other bowl, which was covered up. The data revealed no difference between the dog breeds for the task.
Not just that, human gesture reading ability was also measured. And the professionals also investigated how independent a dog was. Again, the Belgian Shepherd Malinois topped the list for both the human gesture and V-detour task. It was the fifth most independent breed.
Border collies lived up to their reputation, coming second with 26 points, while the Hovawart got the bronze medal with 25 points, one point ahead of the Spanish Water Dog. At the same time, Golden Retriever and Labrador topped the list for the gesture test.
Here is the list of the 13 most intelligent dog breeds:
- Belgian Malinois
- Australian Kelpie
- Labrador Retriever
- Border Collie
- Golden Retriever
- Hovawart
- Spanish Water Dog
- Shetland Sheepdog
- English Cocker Spaniel
- Australian Shepherd
- Mixed Breed
- German Shepherd
- Finnish Lapphund
