A segment on the National Geographic TV channel caught my eye yesterday evening. It featured a Doberman Pincher named Donnie, with apparently some unusually advanced cognitive abilities. It seems that Donny is a designer, arranging his toys in geometric patterns.Donnie lives in a home with a large yard, and his owners supply him with some 80 stuffed animal toys of various kinds. After a while they noticed that the dog was arranging the toys in patterns, and sometimes according to type. Barbara Smuts, a researcher from the University of Michigan was contacted, and looked into it.
First, Smuts set out to determine if the claims were legitimate. She set up several video cameras to observe the dog, and watched his behavior herself -- viewing him with binoculars from the house window.
In time she became convinced that the dog behaves as claimed: Donnie places the toys in straight lines, triangles, and circles; he sometimes groups toy primates together, and toy frogs together. At times he appears to link chains of toys together, as if they were holding hands. Smuts is apparently convinced that the patterns are done on purpose, and are not a result of random play by the dog.
An overview of Smuts' work with Donny -- including photos of some of his toy designs -- can be found here.
Smart dog
I caught that segment on TV also. What an amazing animal! It seems that Donny was also arranging the stuffed toys to "hug" one another. Thanks for the link. If anyone else hears more about this, please speak up.