Study reveals which dog breed is the smartest, and it’s not what you might expect - Upworthy

Skyler: Hey there, and welcome to Frosty the Dog — the show that celebrates everything wonderful, wild, and deeply good about our best friends. I'm Skyler, your host, and I am so happy you're here. This show is named for Frosty — the best boy, the inspiration behind every single episode — and today, like every day, we're doing this one in his honor. We've got incredible stories lined up for you today: we're talking about the dog breed scientists just crowned the smartest, why dogs all over the world seem to love us in exactly the same way, and — one of my favorites — why your dog keeps stealing your shoes. But first, a huge thank you to our sponsors. Leading the pack, as always, is our primary sponsor and namesake, Frosty — the best boy in the whole world. We're also brought to you by Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a portfolio of companies across the silicon industry. We are so grateful for all of them. Okay, friends — let's talk dogs. Skyler: So, first up — Dog Science and Discovery. And oh, this one is fun. A new study just dropped asking one of the most delightful questions in all of science: which dog breed is the smartest? And I know what you're thinking. Border Collie, right? Because that's always the answer. They herd sheep, they learn hundreds of words, they do agility courses that make me feel deeply uncoordinated. But here's the thing — the study says it's not what you'd expect. And I love that. I love when science comes in and just gently tips over everything we thought we knew. Skyler: Now, the findings point to something really interesting about how we even define "smart" in dogs. Because here's the thing scientists have been wrestling with for years — dog intelligence isn't one single thing. It's not like there's one test you give a dog and boom, smart or not smart. There's social intelligence, which is how well a dog reads people and other dogs. There's problem-solving intelligence — can the dog figure out how to get the treat out of the puzzle toy? There's working intelligence — how quickly does a dog learn a command? And then there's something researchers sometimes call adaptive intelligence, which is basically: how well does this dog figure out its own environment on its own? Skyler: And when you look at breeds across all of those dimensions together — not just obedience, not just trick-learning — the rankings shift in really surprising ways. Breeds that seem goofy or stubborn in traditional training settings might actually be off the charts in other areas. Hounds, for example. People sometimes joke that hounds are the class clowns of the dog world. But a bloodhound following a scent trail is performing a cognitive feat that no computer, no A I system, no human nose could replicate. That is intelligence. It's just not the kind that wins you a ribbon at obedience school. Skyler: Frosty, I have to say — and I say this with all the love in my heart — Frosty was not necessarily the most obedient dog in the room. But he was perceptive in a way that just stopped you in your tracks sometimes. He knew things. You know what I mean? Dogs always know things. And that's exactly what this research is getting at — we've been measuring dog smarts with the wrong ruler for a long time. Skyler: The study is really a call to appreciate the full spectrum of what dogs can do — and to stop ranking them against each other like there's only one way to be brilliant. Every breed was shaped over thousands of years for a specific job, a specific kind of thinking. So of course they're going to show their smarts in different ways. A sled dog's intelligence shows up in endurance and teamwork. A terrier's intelligence shows up in tenacity and independent problem-solving. It's like comparing a painter to a mathematician and asking who's smarter. The question kind of misses the point, doesn't it? Skyler: What I love about this study is that it's really an invitation to look at your own dog and ask — what is this dog good at? What does this dog notice that I don't? What can this dog do that genuinely amazes me? Because I promise you, if you sit with that question long enough, you'll find something. Every single dog has it. Skyler: Alright, let's move into our second thread, and this one genuinely gave me chills when I first read it. We're talking about Dogs and Humans — the bond, the connection, the thing that makes this whole show possible and that Frosty himself embodied every single day of his wonderful life. Skyler: So Discover Magazine just covered a fascinating piece of research looking at how dogs form bonds with humans — and here's what's so remarkable about it. They studied dogs across wildly different cultures and places. We're talking Mongolia. Madagascar. Vastly different climates, languages, lifestyles, economies. Dogs with totally different day-to-day lives, different roles in their communities, different everything. And what did they find? That the bond dogs form with their human caregivers looks remarkably similar no matter where you go. Skyler: Let that sink in for a second. In a tiny herding community in Mongolia and in a village in Madagascar, the way a dog looks to a human for reassurance — the way they check in, the way they respond to that person's presence — it's the same. The love is the same. The attachment is the same. Across oceans, across cultures, across thousands of miles. Dogs found humans, and they stayed. Skyler: This matters so much more than it might seem at first glance. Because it tells us that the dog-human bond isn't a product of any one culture, or any one type of relationship, or any one set of circumstances. It's something deeper than that. It's woven into what dogs are. Scientists think that over the roughly fifteen thousand years or so that dogs have been alongside humans — maybe longer — they developed this extraordinary attunement to us. They learned to read us. They learned to love us. And apparently, they do it everywhere, in every corner of the world, in ways that look so much alike that researchers can recognize the pattern no matter where they look. Skyler: I think about Frosty when I read stuff like this, because he was — I mean, he was the living proof of it, right? That attunement. That awareness of where you were, how you were feeling, what you needed. Dogs have this sixth sense about their people that we're still really only beginning to understand scientifically, even though anyone who's ever loved a dog has felt it completely. Skyler: And speaking of that attunement — oh, I have to tell you about the service dog study, because it fits right in here and it is extraordinary. Research just published in DVM 360 found that service dogs aren't just following commands. They're interpreting the needs of the humans they assist. Interpreting. Not executing. Interpreting. Skyler: What that means in practice is that trained service dogs — the ones who assist people with mobility challenges, with seizures, with diabetes, with PTSD, with all kinds of conditions — these dogs aren't just waiting for a cue and then performing a behavior they were trained to perform. They're reading the situation. They're picking up on signals — physical signals, behavioral signals, maybe signals we don't even fully understand yet — and they're making a judgment call about what their human needs right now. Skyler: There are documented cases of diabetic alert dogs alerting to blood sugar changes before the person's own continuous glucose monitor goes off. Think about that. The dog detects it first. There are psychiatric service dogs who interrupt a person's anxiety spiral before the person has even fully realized they're spiraling. The dog knows before the human does. That is not just training. That is a relationship. That is a dog who is paying attention to you so deeply, so constantly, that they know your body and your patterns better than you know them yourself. Skyler: The researchers are trying to understand the exact mechanisms — what cues are the dogs reading, and how are they making these decisions — because if we can understand that, we can train even more dogs to do it even better. And that means more people getting the help they need. It's one of those areas where dog science has real, immediate, life-changing stakes. And I find that just — it's so moving, every time. Skyler: Okay. Third thread. This is the one about Understanding Dogs — how we're learning to decode what they're doing, what they're thinking, what they're trying to tell us. And today I want to start with something that made me laugh and then actually made me think really hard. Skyler: The Washington Post just ran a piece about why dogs do some of their most baffling behaviors. Why does your dog steal your shoes? Why do they eat grass? Why do they spin in circles before lying down? Why do they bark at absolutely nothing — or what seems like nothing — at two in the morning? Skyler: Frosty was a shoe guy. I will not lie to you. The shoe thing was real in our house. And the explanation, once you hear it, is so obvious and so sweet that I can't believe it took me this long to fully appreciate it. Skyler: Dogs steal shoes — and socks, and worn clothing, and anything that smells like you — because those things smell like you. And your scent is comfort. Your scent is safety. Your scent is home. When you leave, and your dog misses you — which they do, genuinely, dogs experience something very real when their people are absent — they seek out the thing that smells most like you. And that's usually something you've had close to your body for a while. Like a shoe. So when Frosty trotted off with someone's sneaker, he wasn't being naughty. He was coping. He was keeping a little piece of his person close to him. Skyler: I dare you to be annoyed about the shoe thing after knowing that. I dare you. Skyler: The piece goes through several other behaviors and the explanations are equally illuminating. The circling before lying down? Ancient behavior, probably inherited from wild ancestors who would have tamped down grass or checked for snakes before settling in. The grass eating? Researchers are still debating this, but current thinking suggests it's often just — dogs like grass sometimes. They're not always sick. They might be seeking fiber, or minerals, or sometimes they just want to chew something green. Dogs are complicated! They contain multitudes! Skyler: And then there's the literary angle I can't pass up — Literary Hub ran a beautiful piece recently by a writer who described learning to love his dog more deeply by actually sitting down and observing his behavior. Just — watching. Paying attention. Without an agenda. And what he found changed how he understood his dog entirely. Skyler: He started noticing things he'd been glossing over for years. The way his dog positioned himself in a room. Who the dog oriented toward. When the dog chose to be close versus when he chose distance. What sounds made his ears shift. What moments made his tail go still. And through that patient observation, he started to understand his dog not as a pet doing pet things, but as a creature with preferences and moods and a whole inner life that was expressing itself constantly — he just hadn't been looking. Skyler: And this is exactly where science is heading too — this idea that we have so much to learn just by paying better attention. Researchers are now using A I tools to analyze dog vocalizations, dog body language, dog facial expressions — looking for patterns that the human eye might miss. There are teams working on systems that can distinguish between different types of barks and whines and growls and map them to emotional states. We're not quite to the point of a universal dog translator, but we're closer than we've ever been. Skyler: And what all of this research keeps coming back to — the behavior studies, the A I analysis, the careful observation — is the same thing that dog lovers have been saying forever: dogs are telling us things all the time. We're just finally learning to listen properly. Frosty was trying to tell me things all the time. I'm pretty sure he was mostly saying "I love you" and "can I have some of that?" but still. The point stands. Skyler: The intersection of A I and animal cognition is one of the most exciting frontiers in science right now, and I think it's going to completely transform how we understand our dogs in the next decade. We're going to look back at this period the way we look back at the early days of learning that dogs dream — that they have REM sleep, that their paws twitch because they're running in their dreams — and think: how did we not see this sooner? How did we live alongside these creatures for fifteen thousand years and only just now start to really hear them? Skyler: Well — we're hearing them now. And that feels like exactly the right thing to be doing. Skyler: Okay, friends — we are at the end of today's episode, and as always, I don't want to go. I never want to stop talking about dogs. This is the gift of this show — every single week, I get to dive into something incredible about the creatures that have chosen to share their lives with us. And I am grateful for it every time. Skyler: Today reminded me, again, that dogs are so much more than we give them credit for. They're smart in ways that defy our categories. They bond with us across every culture and every corner of the globe. They interpret our needs, they comfort us with our own scent, and they are talking to us constantly — in every tail wag, every glance, every little sigh when they curl up next to you. We just have to be willing to pay attention. Skyler: Frosty — best boy, namesake of this whole show, the dog who started it all — this one's for you. Always for you. Skyler: Frosty the Dog is brought to you by Frosty — the best boy — along with Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor. We are so grateful for their support. If you loved today's episode, please subscribe, leave a review, share it with a fellow dog lover — or honestly, share it with someone who doesn't think they're a dog person yet, because we can fix that. And you can find links to all the stories we talked about today in the link in show notes. Until next time — stay curious, give your dog a scratch behind the ears, and remember: they already know you love them. But it never hurts to show it.