Good Dog, Smart Dog

Jet has been trained to anticipate seizures, panic attacks and plunging blood sugar and will alert his owner to these things by staring intently at her until she does something about the problem. He will drop a toy in her lap to snap her out of a dissociative state. If she has a seizure, he will position himself so that his body is under her head to cushion a fall.

Jet seems like a genius, but is he really so smart? In fact, is any of it in his brain, or is it mostly in his sniff?

How much cognitive ability does a dog really have? There’s no clear consensus, but recent research has produced interesting results. Even if you have trouble accepting that a canine brain processes information in a way similar to a human brain, some dogs are capable of remarkable behavior.

11.02.2009Tagged with: