Breed differences

A RECENT study investigated the social learning abilities of different dog breeds. Researchers found that some breeds are more attuned to human behaviour and perform better in problemsolving tasks. The study involved nearly 100 dogs from two groups: cooperative working dogs (eg sheepdogs, pointers, and retrievers) and independent working dogs (eg, terriers, sighthounds, spitz breeds, and livestock guarding dogs).

The dogs were tested on a task involving circling an obstacle. Initially, all breeds struggled, but when they observed a human demonstrator, the cooperative working dogs performed better than the independent working dogs. The results suggest that breed traits influence dogs’ ability to learn from humans.

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