Ranking of dogs: which dog breeds are the smartest according to scientists?

Some dog breeds are said to be smarter than others. At least that’s according to a study published at the end of December in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

The researchers ofat the University of Helsinki in Finland has set out to analyze a thousand dogs according to their breed and the results are decisive.

Several experiments and tests performed

The researchers thus carried out cognitive and behavioral tests on a thousand dogs off 13 races different between March 2016 and February 2022.

The animals were selected and were between 1 and 8 years old.

The experiments performed made it possible to analyze for each breedcognitive abilities such as learning, memory, concentration, spatial problem solving and social cognition, as well as reasoning and impulsivity, i.a.

PDuring the tests carried out, the dogs had to, for example, bypass a transparent barrier, interpret a person’s movements, ask for help to open a closed box…

According to Dr. Katriina Tiira, co-author of the study: “The malinois shepherd excelled in many cognitive tasks and performed very well in most tests,” as The Telegraph reports.

Like Border Collies, who “also performed well in many tests.”

Comments added by another author to the study Saara Junttila, specialist in dog cognition : “Most races had their own strengths and weaknesses”.

Before adding: “For example, the Labrador Retriever was very good at reading human gestures, but not so good at spatial problem-solving.”

Classification

The results are therefore as follows for the 13 breeds examined. The former are the most intelligent, the latter a little less so.

• 7. The Spanish Water Dog

• 8. Shetland Sheepdog

• 11. Cross or mixed dogs
• 12. The German Shepherd

• 13. The Finnish Lapland dog