Animals Matter


How smart is your pet?


Have you ever wondered how smart your pets are? Most people look at their pets and feel they have the smartest animal in the world. And they probably do. Their pet has learned how to read their owner’s body language and knows when it’s a good time to snuggle and when it’s a good time to stay away.

Some people base animal intelligence on how much the pet can understand humans. Dogs can learn an average of 100 human words; some Border Collies have been know to comprehend about 250 words. (To put that in perspective, the average three-year-old child knows about 200 to 300 words.) Cats comprehend only about 20 human words. If that compels you to mutter that cats are less intelligent than dogs, then I ask you how many cat and dogs words to you actually understand? Bingo.

Animal intelligence is not based on how many human words a pet can understand, although they certainly do a better job of understanding us then we do them. Intelligence is more about how they master their environment — and that does include you. My dogs have trained me to get up and let them out when they go to the door; to feed them at a certain time; to take them for walks; and to give them an ice cube everytime I get a drink of water. They know not to get on the furniture, but do so the minute I leave the house. They move things around the house if they don’t like where they are placed. Something is clicking in their brains.

Some people are afraid to explore animal intelligence for fear it will put animals too close to humans in the circle of life — and then we might have to examine how we treat them. Of course, that’s the very reason we should explore animal intelligence. The more you understand them, the better you will want to treat them.

To better understand your dog, cat, bird, fish (did you not see Finding Nemo?), horse, rabbit, or rodent, you can test your pet’s intelligence here.

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