{"id":320,"date":"2025-04-26T07:44:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T07:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2025\/04\/26\/whos-a-clever-boy-the-average-dog-has-a-mental-age-of-about-two-but-what-are-they-really-thinking-dogs-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-04-26T07:44:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T07:44:45","slug":"whos-a-clever-boy-the-average-dog-has-a-mental-age-of-about-two-but-what-are-they-really-thinking-dogs-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2025\/04\/26\/whos-a-clever-boy-the-average-dog-has-a-mental-age-of-about-two-but-what-are-they-really-thinking-dogs-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s a clever boy: the average dog has a mental age of about two. But what are they really thinking? | Dogs | The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coren adapted tests used for human infants to research dogs\u2019 language-learning abilities. \u201cWe found that the average dog has a mental age of between two and two-and-a-half years [in human terms],\u201d he says, one of his dogs barking in the background. \u201cThe super-dogs, the upper 20% in terms of intelligence, have a mental age of between two-and-a-half and three.\u201d We can extrapolate this, he says, to other mental and emotional capabilities. \u201cIf an average two-and-a-half-year-old is expected to have these abilities, then the first guess would be that a dog would have those abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young children recognise when the number of objects they\u2019ve been looking at changes; dogs do too. Coren says dogs can count up to five. Between the ages of one and three, a child will learn to respond to a pointing gesture. \u201cAt about age two, the average child will know there\u2019s something interesting there, and will usually look in that direction.\u201d Dogs will do the same. But, he says, \u201cwolves don\u2019t have that response, even if they\u2019ve been reared with a human family\u201d.<\/p>\n

One area where dogs beat toddlers is memory. Think of how much you remember from when you were around two (probably nothing). \u201cHowever, dogs have a good memory and there are lots of examples,\u201d says Coren. He recalls a colleague\u2019s dog that had previously been owned by the colleague\u2019s Czech father, who had taught the dog commands in his native language. The colleague inherited the dog when it was about 18 months old, and it lived with him and his English-speaking family. Around seven years later, when a relative from the Czech Republic visited, the dog still responded to commands in Czech.<\/p>\n

In terms of emotions, Coren says that the average two-and-a-half-year-old human \u201cwill have all of the basic emotions \u2013 fear, aggression, love, surprise and disgust, but complex social emotions like guilt don\u2019t show up until a child is about four\u201d. Many dog owners will claim that they can instantly recognise their dog\u2019s \u201cguilty face\u201d \u2013 and there are numerous pictures and videos online of dogs apparently looking remorseful \u2013 but this is anthropomorphism at work again, as a study by Alexandra Horowitz, an expert in canine cognition, has shown. \u201cDogs don\u2019t feel guilt, and those expressions you see are really fear, because they know that when they see their owner and the evidence of their transgression, then bad things happen,\u201d says Coren.
\n\u2014 Read on www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2025\/apr\/26\/whos-a-clever-boy-the-average-dog-has-a-mental-age-of-about-two-but-what-are-they-really-thinking<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coren adapted tests used for human infants to research dogs\u2019 language-learning abilities. \u201cWe found that the average dog has a mental age of between two and two-and-a-half years [in human terms],\u201d he says, one of his dogs barking in the background. \u201cThe super-dogs, the upper 20% in terms of intelligence, have a mental age of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}