C’mon, just because they were bad spellers don’t mean they weren’t smart. Nowadays we recognize lots of kinds of intelligence, not just book smarts! 
Domestication dumbs down organisms, so a wolf, or dingo, or coyote would be a better candidate for canine genius. Neanderthals had bigger brains than we do; it’s safe to assume, if you could design a culturally unbiased test, they’d have more Mensa members.
This. Sort of.
Dogs diverged from wolves somewhere around 30 thousand years ago. Sheep and goats, next earliest, were around 10,000 years ago, and deliberate breeding for traits was probably much later. Dogs were genetically dogs, living as commensal to humans, for many thousands of generations before they were truly domesticated as we understand it. Pariah-type dogs live in much the same way all over the world as the early dogs probably did.
You don’t need nearly the brain power to live off offal and feces as you do to team up with your pack and figure out how to kill animals much larger than you are. Large brains are calorically expensive. The smart-as-wolves dogs starved before the just-smart-enough-to-find-the-garbage dogs. Ta da.
But my point was, dogs or wolves, the genes they have produce a certain level of intelligence, just like monkeys or apes. We are much smarter because in slow steps over millions of years, we acquired mutations and then selected for those mutations that conferred intelligence.
To significantly increase dog intelligence, we would have to do the same - keep selecting for smarts and wait for each tweak of the genes that Mother Nature provides, for hundreds and thousands of generations - because viable beneficial mutations are rare.
Focusing simply on dogs vs. wolves, I think dogs are getting short shrift here. The average dog is probably dumber than a wolf, but using whatever means of establishing intelligence in canids possible I would be surprised if wolves would measure as high as border collies.
Aren’t Seeing Eye and other guide dogs bred for intelligence? They’re bred for certain other traits as well, but I’d think intelligence of a certain type would be pretty important.
Indeed. Even the 8-ounce bars are lacking in elbow room.
The true answer is, apparently, complicated. Wolves have about 20% more brain capacity than dogs of the same size. Their heads are bigger, their jaws are much stronger, their teeth are a lot bigger . . . an adult wolf has no problem tearing through a chainlink fence, for example.
Wolves work with other wolves of their pack to execute very complex tasks. Dogs do not do this even when opportunity arises. But, dogs working with human beings can learn things no other animal can, including wolves. They are the only animal – including the great apes – which correctly interpret human facial expressions, for one example. They don’t learn this, they are born with this capacity.
Essentially what this means is, it is really hard to devise tests that compare their intelligence with truly wild animals. Tests that show dogs unable to solve puzzles wolves can, were rendered at least murky by redoing the tests with the researchers verbally encouraging the dogs (wolves do not respond to human encouragements) – then they performed about the same.
To me, the probable answer is: dogs’ intelligence is so uniquely specialized to human relationships that it can’t be directly compared to any other animals’.
Only to some extent. A Guide Dog has to be able to sit quietly for hours when their partner is at work. They have to stay on task and not be too curious. However they are trained to disobey their partner in specific cases, such as the partner wishing to cross the street when traffic is coming.
Our breeder is reasonably smart, but nowhere as smart as our border collie was.
I’m not aware of dogs getting career changed because of dumbness, but I suppose it could happen if the dog couldn’t learn the commands.
Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) had a dog (“Spike”) as a boy, that apparently “Had a vocabulary of fifty words. You could tell him to go down to the cellar to get a potato, and he would do that” (sorry, no citation)
I’ve also read that really intelligent dogs don’t make good pets. Yes, they can learn to beg, or roll over, or go down to the cellar to get a potato, but why would they want to do that?
Our border collie was a great pet. He was immensely devoted to my wife who worked from home. He had strong preferences about things and made them known. But he knew he was not the alpha dog. He loved to howl - but would only do it when I gave him permission.
Instincts are deep, even for smart dogs. He had no desire to fetch, but he loved to herd, and he’d herd other dogs in the field very efficiently.
:rolleyes:
The link isn’t working properly.
I have heard a (possibly apocryphal) story of a border collie which had been acquired by a person who did not know what they were getting into. When the activity level of the dog got to them, they put it in the back yard while running errands. With no toys or anything else to do.
The dog allegedly removed the siding from the house as high as it could reach - without damage except for the nail holes - and piled it up. Then it started on the bark of the trees, and piled that up. In a separate pile.
I have heard it expressed that border collies are highly intelligent, but born with OCD. There are anecdotes of them …
Wait for it …
Herding cats. Successfully. :dubious:
Worked for me when I tried it in your reply message. Local problem perhaps?
Does not work for me either. I just get the Tripod logo.
Its you. It doesnt work for us. Tripod? Really?
That’s where I found it …
Not my post, I just went out looking for the cartoon I knew existed.
I don’t play in the various social media, so I haven’t a clue how to download it and upload it somewhere else. Sorry. :o
Addendum; I could download it just fine, it’s posting it where it’s more accessible that I can’t manage.
I assume it’s Larsen’s “What a dog hears” and “What a cat hears”?
Both fairly concise summaries.
Actually no.
Here’s a description:
Background; a caveman camp, in the center of the clearing is a dog with a vacant expression.
Foreground; three wolves looking around a tree into the camp.
Caption; “It’s Bob all right … but look at those vacuous eyes, that stupid grin on his face - he’s been domesticated, I tell you.”