Research says dogs can count without being trained to do so

DOGS know how to count without being trained, scientists have said, as new research suggests they use a similar part of their brains as humans do to work out numbers.

Researchers from Emory University in America trained dogs to lie still in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner and analysed their responses to varying numbers of dots flashed on a screen.

The results, published in Biology Letters, showed that the dogs’ parietotemporal cortex responded to differences in the number of the dots.

Scientists held the total area of the dots constant, demonstrating it was the number of the dots, not the size, that generated the response. The approximate number system supports the ability to estimate quickly the number of objects in a scene, such as the number of predators approaching or the amount of food available for foraging.

Eleven dogs of varying breeds that had not received any training in numerosity were involved in the study. Much of the previous research into animals’

‘Our work ... shows that dogs use a similar part of their brains to process numbers as humans do’

sensitivity to numerical information has involved intense training.

Gregory Berns, professor of psychology at Emory University and senior author of the study, said: “Our work not only shows that dogs use a similar part of their brain to process numbers of objects as humans do – it shows that they don’t need to be trained to do it.”

Researchers say evidence suggests that humans primarily draw on their parietal cortex for the same ability, which is present even in infancy.

Appearing to be widespread throughout the animal kingdom, this basic sensitivity to numerical information, known as numerosity, does not rely on symbolic thought or training.

Lauren Aulet, a PHD candidate and first author of the study, said: “We went right to the source, observing the dogs’ brains, to get a direct understanding of what their neurons were doing when the dogs viewed varying quantities of dots. That allowed us to bypass the weaknesses of previous behavioural studies of dogs and some other species.”

Prof Berns said that humans and dogs are separated by 80million years of evolution, but the study provides “some of the strongest evidence” yet that numerosity is a shared neural mechanism that goes back at least that far.