Clever dogs offer clues to a long life
THEY say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
But the cleverness of canines young and old is being examined by scientists who believe it could have ‘far-reaching implications’ for understanding human health.
A new ‘dog IQ test’ has been developed by Scottish scientists, who say it could pave the way for breakthroughs in our understanding of the link between intelligence and health.
Experts have discovered that dog intelligence works the same way as a human’s, so clever canines who perform well in one task tend also to do well in others.
Recent studies have shown that brighter people tend to live longer, and so scientists believe if they can prove the same is true in dogs, they can use them to study longterm health problems such as dementia.
Research, published in the journal Intelligence today, stresses that experts have only just established that dog intelligence is measurable, just as it is in humans, but have yet to establish a link to health.
Scientists put the intelligence of 68 working border collies to the test by devising a series of cognitive tasks for them.
One involved finding their way to a food reward they could see behind a barrier, forcing them to go around it rather than dig. Another involved offering two plates of food and assessing if the dogs learnt to go to the one with the bigger portion. A third task examined how many times a dog followed a human pointing gesture.
Those that performed well in one task tended to be above average in the others.
Dr Mark Adams, research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, which carried out the study with the London School of Economics, said the study was the first step to creating a ‘reliable dog IQ test’. He said: ‘Such a test could rapidly improve our understanding of the connection between dog intelligence, health, even lifespan, and be the foundation of “dognitive epidemiology”.
‘Dogs are excellent for this kind of work because they are willing to participate and seem to enjoy taking part.’
Dr Rosalind Arden, a research associate at the London School of Economics, said: ‘We asked the question, if a dog is good at one test, does it tend to be better than average at the other test? And we found that, yes, that’s true.’
Dr Arden said scientists have known for some time that brighter people tend to live longer. But this can be notoriously tricky to investigate because our lifestyle choices – whether we smoke, and how much we eat, drink and exercise – have a major impact on our health.
Dogs offer a good insight because they are ‘basically teetotal’, Dr Arden said.
‘Dogs are very reliable on that front. They don’t touch pipes, don’t touch cigars, don’t kid around with recreational drugs – lots of things that muck up our findings in human reports can be very much better studied in non-human animals’, she said.
They also have another important trait – like humans, they naturally acquire dementia. Dr Arden added: ‘You’ll find a dog that changes its social habits, it doesn’t want to be petted any more, it becomes introverted and likes to be alone. They reproduce lots of the disturbances found in human dementia.’