Chaser is a Border Collie dog with the largest tested memory of any non-human animal. She can identify 1,022 toys by their name and retrieve them by name and by category. She was taught by retired Wofford College professor and psychologist Dr. John W. Pilley, with the formal research published.
Chaser knows over a thousand names of items, more than any other animal of any species except humans. In addition to common nouns like house, ball and tree, she has memorized the names of more than one thousand toys and can retrieve any of them on command. Based on that learning, she and her owner and trainer, retired psychologist Dr. John W. Pilley, have moved on to further impressive feats, demonstrating her ability to understand sentences with multiple elements of grammar and to learn new behaviors by imitation.
Chaser can learn new words by "inferential reasoning by exclusion", that is, inferring the name of a new object by excluding objects whose names she already knows.
See also
- Betsy, a border collie known to understand over 340 words
- Rico, a border collie who was reported to understand over 200 words
- Koko, a gorilla who learned sign language
- Kanzi, a bonobo who has learnt language through keyboard lexigrams
- Alex, an African grey parrot known for intelligent use of speech
- Dog intelligence
- Ayumu, a chimpanzee
- Talking birds, including a budgerigar named Puck
- Animal cognition
References
External links
- Chaser The Border Collie:The Smartest Dog In The World?
- Nova Science Now : How Smart Are Dogs? Chaser with Neil deGrasse Tyson (at 1:50 and 10:43)
