We love our pet pooches.
They are the most adorable things in the world, they light up our lives and they make us incredibly happy.
Dogs basically tick all the boxes for us when it comes to companions… however, science doesn’t think there’s anything that special about them compared to other animals.
In a recent study from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University, it explored the biases toward dogs in research, and found that dogs—when compared to other intelligent, social hunters and carnivorans (wolves, cats, hyenas, chimpanzees and dolphins) they aren’t that great with cognitive abilities.
The study’s lead author, Stephen Lea, said: “During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to ‘prove’ how clever dogs are.
“They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs ‘win’, this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional.
“Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks.”
Meanwhile, Dr Britta Osthaus of Canterbury Christ Church University said: “We are doing dogs no favour by expecting too much of them. Dogs are dogs, and we need to take their needs and true abilities into account when considering how we treat them.”
We’re still going to praise our dogs to the high heavens.
