IF you own a particularly playful dog it could be a sign that your furry friend is actually a genius.
Experts studied a bunch of Border Collies classed as gifted and compared them to a group of ordinary dogs.
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Gifted dogs tend to be able to learn the names of stuff very quickly and can remember it for a good two months or so.
Border collies are the most common breed known to be gifted when it comes to word memory.
So researchers asked owners to complete a questionnaire analysing their pup’s personality.
The results identified one major difference between gifted dogs and typical dogs – playfulness.
“We restricted our investigation to Border collies because most of the Gifted Word Learners belong to this breed,” Claudia Fugazza, from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary told Inverse.
“This study finds a relationship between extreme levels of playfulness and giftedness in word learning.”
But scientists still don’t know why this is.
Establishing the cause is “difficult”, Fugazza said.
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One possible explanation experts guess could be the environment where dogs learn words.
More research is needed to prove it though.
Another interesting observation is that playful dogs tend to establish eye contact with humans a lot faster as well.
“It could be a genetic trait or this extreme playfulness could be environmentally enhanced by the frequent playful interactions with the owner,” Fugazza added.
All you need to know as a dog owner
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
