How quick-witted is your canine? Scientists at the University of Helsinki in Finland might have an answer.

In a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, Saara Junttila and colleagues put 1,002 dogs through a series of intelligence tests to assess the performance of 13 different dog breeds.

The series of ten tests, known as smartDOG, were developed by one of the study's co-authors, Katriina Tiira, to examine exploratory behavior, impulsivity, social cognition, spatial problem-solving, logical reasoning and short-term memory.

"We expected that breeds would differ from each other in most traits, and they did," Tiira told Newsweek. "This was well visible for testers doing the smartDOG testing in practice—breeds had typical cognitive profiles in the test."

Junttila said that this was not the case for all traits studied.

"It was a bit surprising that memory and logical reasoning were not affected by breed," she told Newsweek. "It might be that these traits have not been selected for in different breeds, or that environmental effects—such as training history, test situation and previous lifetime experiences—may influence these traits more strongly than breed."

One of the best performing breeds across the test series was the border collie. This is consistent with previous research by Stanley Coren, author of The Intelligence of Dogs and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia's Department of Psychology.

"According to my research the seven dog breeds with the highest working and obedience intelligence, starting with the brightest are: border collie, poodle, German shepherd, golden retriever, Doberman pinscher, Shetland sheepdog and Labrador retriever," Coren told Newsweek.

In the present study, Labrador retrievers scored near the bottom in the tests involving problem-solving and inhibitory control. However, Coren said that this does not mean the Labrador is unintelligent.

"All of the dog breeds selected for this study are very bright," he said. In other words, taking these results to mean that the Labrador is the dumbest dog breed is misleading.

"This is equivalent to taking a sample of ten Nobel Prize winners and comparing their intelligence and concluding that because, for example, Marie Curie comes out at the bottom of the list that she must be really dumb," said Coren.

The study, however, did not aim to rank different dog breeds.

"The purpose of the study was really to understand how dog breeds differ from each other in each of the studied traits," Junttila said.

There was, however, one major limitation to the research.

"We did not have access to information on the training histories of the participating dogs, although a large proportion of them very likely were active in dog sports or competitions," Junttila said. "Previous studies have shown that participation in dog sports or the amount of training a dog has received may affect the results of some of these tests, but there is also evidence that many of these traits are heritable. In future studies, we will be investigating the combined effects of breed and training history."

Tiira said that trainability does not equate to intelligence, although it is unclear how this would affect the test results.

"A dog which is easy to train has a high motivation to work with the trainer/owner," she said. "A highly trainable dog is usually focused on the trainer and motivated to do tricks over and over again, as well as to learn new tricks. Thus, trainability may not have much to do with intelligence, but instead with how easy it is for the trainer to motivate the dog to do several kinds of tasks."

Coren said that a dog's performance in these tests is also dependent on the animal's personality, not just its IQ.

"A simplistic example would be that a dog who is very hyperactive might dash around and miss important clues that might help solve the problem," Coren said. "It is also the case that the sociability of a dog will determine whether or not it pays enough attention to humans to be able to pick up the nuances of commands."

The suggestion that there is some heritable component of cognitive characteristics in dogs could have important implications for understanding the capabilities of different dog breeds.

"The results help us create a more complete picture of breed-specific behaviors and, in the long run, maybe even help us choose the right kind of breeds for the right tasks," Junttila said.

"Our next aim is to investigate whether the results from these cognitive tests can be seen in the owners' descriptions of their dogs' behavior and characteristics, such as impulsivity, aggression, fear, trainability, or excitability. This will provide a lot more insight into what these tests actually measure," she said.

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References

Junttila, S., Valros, A., Mäki, K. et al. Breed differences in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris), Sci Rep, December 29 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26991-5