Rico: The 200 word dog.
According to "Spiegel", this is the dog.
"Spiegel-Online"....Hund Rico lernt wie ein Kind....Rico the dog learns like a child
longjack
Posted on 06/10/2004 10:41:32 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As many a dog owner will attest, our furry friends are listening. Now, for the doubters, there is scientific proof they understand much of what they hear.
German researchers have found a border collie named Rico who understands more than 200 words and can learn new ones as quickly as many children.
Patti Strand, an American Kennel Club board member, called the report "good news for those of us who talk to our dogs."
"Like parents of toddlers, we learned long ago the importance of spelling key words like bath, pill or vet when speaking in front of our dogs," Strand said. "Thanks to the researchers who've proven that people who talk to their dogs are cutting-edge communicators, not just a bunch of eccentrics."
The researchers found that Rico knows the names of dozens of play toys and can find the one called for by his owner. That is a vocabulary size about the same as apes, dolphins and parrots trained to understand words, the researchers say.
Rico can even take the next step, figuring out what a new word means.
The researchers put several known toys in a room along with one that Rico had not seen before. From a different room, Rico's owner asked him to fetch a toy, using a name for the toy the dog had never heard.
The border collie, a breed known primarily for its herding ability, was able to go to the room with the toys and, seven times out of 10, bring back the one he had not seen before. The dog seemingly understood that because he knew the names of all the other toys, the new one must be the one with the unfamiliar name.
"Apparently he was able to link the novel word to the novel item based on exclusion learning, either because he knew that the familiar items already had names or because they were not novel," said the researchers, led by Julia Fischer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
A month later, he still remembered the name of that new toy three out of six times, even without having seen it since that first test. That is a rate the scientists said was equivalent to that of a 3-year-old.
Rico's learning ability may indicate that some parts of speech comprehension developed separately from human speech, the scientists said.
"You don't have to be able to talk to understand a lot," Fischer said. The team noted that dogs have evolved with humans and have been selected for their ability to respond to the communications of people.
Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for life sciences, said "such fast, one-trial learning in dogs is remarkable. This ability suggests that the brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans and may have formed the evolutionary basis of some of the advanced language abilities of humans."
Perhaps, although Paul Bloom of Yale University urges caution.
"Children can understand words used in a range of contexts. Rico's understanding is manifested in his fetching behavior," Bloom writes in a commentary, also in Science.
Bloom calls for further experiments to answer several questions: Can Rico learn a word for something other than a small object to be fetched? Can he display knowledge of a word in some way other than fetching? Can he follow an instruction not to fetch something?
Fischer and her colleagues are still working with Rico to see if he can understand requests to put toys in boxes or to bring them to certain people. Rico was born in December 1994 and lives with his owners. He was tested at home.
Funding for this research was provided in part by the German Research Foundation.
And that is because cats are really tiny little women in fur coats!
(ducking and running!)
regards,
not the girls I picked up in a bar at 1:00 am.
Purchase a large steak. Cook it so that your dog knows it is for you. Wait until the dog departs the room. Drop steak on ground. Then say, "Damn, there goes my steak. Sigh, I sure hate throwing out all this meat." If your canine doesn't appear within 3 seconds, he's illiterate. If he appears between .5 and 3 seconds, he's literate. If he appears in under one second, he's literate and precognitive. If your steak never actually hits the floor, your dog is a Republican.
I think Salty will have to fight Bit for it and I think he'll lose. That fat pig of a cat has twice stolen the bacon out of my burger! Both times the burger was left unattended only for a few seconds. Now I take the burger with me.
She stole your bacon? Beotch.
want a c-o-o-k-i-e? My dog's not very good at spelling, but she knows lots of words. Comeere you stupid $^$@t
Ahahahahaha, yay for laughing at work. In all seriousness Bacon, if my girl had a cat (ok, impossible right there) and that cat took my bacon, my girl would then find her cat in my mouth (no double entendre jokes, please, we are all adults!).
Ask Bacon how many cats he has.
Whoaaaaa, Nelly. BACON is the cat owner? And how many, pray tell do you own, Mr. Bacon?
My cats understand me, too.
My dog understands some words.
He knows food, doggie, kitty, bird, walk and bath for sure.
He also like to watch cartoons and barks at animals he sees on the animal channel.
A massive 4 pound Yorkie boy!
Before him I had a 105 pound golden lab and it was the same case with words, but not TV.
Six total or ten if you go by weight. Three are mine and three are Mrs Bacon's. Bit the bacon thief is one of mine.
My blue heeler learned to wipe her feet by watching me when ever i wipe mine she wipes hers, to go to her kennel she knows three different commands, "kennel" "time out" and "good night" and her body actions are appropriate for each command. the only thing i am having a hard time doing is to have her sit and stay, she will stay but not stay sitting, oh well she is only two.
LOL! My dog is definitely a Republican.
"Cook it so that your dog knows it is for you. Wait until the dog departs the room"
My dog would have to be taken by the collar and physically removed from the room if a steak was cooking. And she would be right back in the kitchen, the minute she was turned loose.
If food is being prepared, she will come and lie down in a strategic location to where the food is. She pretends to be asleep. But , should even a small scrap fall , she snaps awake, and strikes like a rattle snake, and catches it before it hits the floor! "(We call her Dust Buster, because we never have to vacuum up any spilled food"). She will also decide to get up, and walk right in front of you , if you are carrying a plate or something. ( I swear she's trying to trip me).
We have to lock her up if people come over. She has the bad habit of removing a guest's plate of food from the table. When they're not looking she will set the plate gently onto the floor, (without spilling a drop), and then she devours it in under 2 seconds.Sometimes, I don't know why we put up with her.
She knows the word "Walk" too. All I have to say is "Want to go for a walk?". She will go to the front door and start whining and barking loudly until I put her leash on and take her for her walk. She's a character.
Rico: The 200 word dog.
According to "Spiegel", this is the dog.
"Spiegel-Online"....Hund Rico lernt wie ein Kind....Rico the dog learns like a child
longjack
I once caught a baby garter snake in my yard that bit me repeatedly. I thought it was hilarious.
Oh, it's German. Of course German is most dogs' native language. I say 'Schweigts du, Hund' and he gets the idea right away.
Cute dog. Border Collies are supposed to be tha smateest dogs as I understand.
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