These Are The 'Smartest' Dog Breeds, According to a Canine Psychologist - ScienceAlert

Skyler: Hey there, dog lovers, 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 with us today. Skyler: This show is named for a very special boy — Frosty — the best boy in the whole world, and the dog who inspired every single episode we make. Frosty is our heart, our namesake, and honestly, our North Star. Whenever I need reminding why any of this matters, I just think about Frosty, and everything makes sense again. Skyler: Before we dive in, a huge thank you to our sponsors. First and always — our primary sponsor and namesake, Frosty — the best boy in the whole world. Thank you, buddy. We also want to thank Ada, who helps clients integrate A I into their workflows in smart, practical ways — love what they're doing. And Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development consulting from A I all the way to SoC. And finally Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a remarkable portfolio across the silicon industry. We are so grateful for all of them. Skyler: Okay, friends — today we've got a genuinely fantastic lineup. We're going to talk about which dog breeds a canine psychologist calls the smartest — and what "smart" even means for a dog. We're going to look at some jaw-dropping research that says studying dogs might actually help us all live longer. And we're going to peek inside some incredible university labs where students and dogs are figuring each other out together. Plus — shrinking brains. Yes, really. Dog brains. Five thousand years of history packed into one wild discovery. Let's go. Skyler: So — thread one — Dog Science and Discovery. And today, we are starting with a question I bet you've thought about at least once. Which dogs are the smartest? Now, I want to be honest with you right up front — this is one of those questions that sounds simple and turns out to be absolutely delightful and complicated. And I think Frosty would agree, because Frosty always knew more than he let on. Skyler: There's a canine psychologist named Stanley Coren — he's been studying dog intelligence for decades — and his work has become kind of the gold standard when people talk about which breeds are the sharpest. And what he found, when he surveyed hundreds of obedience trial judges and really dug into how dogs learn, is that breeds like Border Collies, Poodles, German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, and Doberman Pinschers tend to sit right at the top of the list. These are dogs that can learn a new command in just a few repetitions and follow it reliably almost every single time. Skyler: But here's where it gets really interesting — and this is the part I love — Coren and other researchers are quick to point out that what we're usually measuring is a very specific kind of intelligence. It's what you might call working intelligence or obedience intelligence. How fast does the dog learn what we want? How reliably do they do it? And that is genuinely impressive, don't get me wrong. Skyler: But dogs have so many other kinds of smarts that those tests don't even touch. There's social intelligence — the ability to read human faces and emotions — and some research suggests dogs are extraordinarily gifted at that, possibly more than any other animal on Earth. There's what researchers call adaptive intelligence, which is about problem-solving on the fly. And then there's instinctive intelligence — the deep, built-in genius of a Bloodhound following a scent that is days old, or a Border Collie herding sheep with almost no instruction at all. Skyler: And I think about this a lot with Frosty. Frosty might not have been sitting there memorizing vocabulary lists, but that dog understood things. He understood people. He understood the room. There's a kind of wisdom in dogs that doesn't fit neatly into any ranking, and I think that's one of the most beautiful things about them. Skyler: Now, here's the story I really want to tell you today — because it blew my mind when I read it, and I think it's going to blow yours too. There's a new study out that looked at dog brains over time — like, way over time — and what they found is that dog brains have actually been getting smaller over the last five thousand years. Five thousand years! Researchers analyzed skull fossils and compared ancient dogs to modern ones, and they found a measurable reduction in brain size that appears to have started around the time dogs became fully domesticated. Skyler: Now, before anyone panics — this does not mean dogs are getting dumber. That is not what this means at all. What it likely reflects is something called the domestication syndrome — a suite of changes that happened when dogs moved from the wild into human homes and human hearts. When you no longer need to hunt for food, when you no longer need to navigate a dangerous world entirely on your own, some of those high-energy brain systems that kept you sharp in the wilderness can actually afford to scale back a little. Skyler: And in their place, something else seems to have grown — this incredible capacity for social bonding, for reading us, for living alongside us. So dogs may have traded some raw survival brainpower for something that looks a lot like emotional intelligence, and honestly? Good trade. That is a phenomenal trade. Frosty definitely would have made that trade. Skyler: The researchers note this mirrors patterns we see in other domesticated animals too, but dogs are a particularly striking example because the relationship between dogs and humans is so deep and so old. Five thousand years of brains reshaping themselves around us. I find that genuinely moving. Skyler: Okay, thread two — Dogs and Humans. And oh, this one. This one is close to my heart. Skyler: You may have seen the 60 Minutes segment — CBS News featured it — about a research effort called the Dog Aging Project. And if you haven't seen it, let me tell you about it, because it is one of the most hopeful things I have come across in a long time. Skyler: The Dog Aging Project is a large-scale, long-term scientific study — one of the biggest of its kind — that is following tens of thousands of pet dogs across the United States over the course of their lives. Researchers are looking at everything: genetics, environment, lifestyle, diet, where dogs live, what they eat, how they exercise, how social they are, what their health looks like year over year. And the goal is to understand what makes some dogs live longer, healthier lives than others. Skyler: Now here's why this is such a big deal for humans too. Dogs age faster than we do, which actually makes them a really valuable research model. You can observe in a dog over ten or twelve years what might take fifty or sixty years to study in a human. And because dogs live alongside us — they share our environments, our sofas, our stress levels, sometimes our snacks — they experience a lot of the same health challenges we do. Heart disease, cancer, cognitive decline. The things that come for all of us eventually. Skyler: So by understanding what helps a dog live well for longer, scientists think they can unlock clues about what helps humans do the same. There's even a clinical trial — rapamycin, a drug that's shown promise in extending healthy lifespan in mice — being tested in dogs right now. And researchers are watching closely. Skyler: But here's the part that really gets me — the human side of this story. The Dog Aging Project works because of dog owners. Real families, real people, who enrolled their dogs and said yes, study my best friend, learn everything you can, and if it helps other dogs and other people live better — that's worth it. That is the dog-and-human bond doing what it does best. Showing up for each other. Skyler: I think Frosty would have been first in line to sign up for something like that. Not because he needed anything — he was just wonderful and perfect — but because that's the kind of generous spirit dogs have. They give us everything. And in this case, they might be giving us the key to living better, longer lives. How extraordinary is that? Skyler: And it's not just the big national projects. All over the country, in labs big and small, people are asking better and better questions about the lives dogs lead and what makes them flourish. Which brings us right into our third thread — Understanding Dogs. Skyler: So let's talk about some of the most exciting places where this understanding is being built, right now, by people who are deeply passionate about it — and in some cases, still in school themselves. Skyler: At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, there's an Animal Behavior Research Lab where students are studying something called cortisol in dogs. Now, cortisol is a stress hormone — humans have it, dogs have it — and it's one of the ways scientists can actually measure stress in a living animal without just guessing. You can test for cortisol in saliva, in urine, and the levels tell you something real about how an animal is feeling. Skyler: What these students are doing is looking at the connection between dogs' cortisol levels and their behavior — asking questions like, when is a dog stressed, and what does that stress look like from the outside? Can you tell from behavior alone? And how do the dogs' stress responses change depending on the situation they're in? This kind of research is so valuable because it gives us a more objective window into the inner lives of dogs. We don't have to just guess how they're feeling — we can look for biological signals. Skyler: And here's what I love about this particular program — the students are learning real scientific skills, like how to collect and analyze data, how to design ethical experiments — but they're doing it alongside dogs. Which means they're also learning how to pay attention. Really pay attention. To read body language, to notice small signals, to be present with another creature in a way that takes patience and practice. Those are skills that will serve them forever, in science and in life. Skyler: Over at Pace University, there's a Dog Lab — and yes, that is its actual name, and it is as wonderful as it sounds — where researchers and students are also exploring dog behavior and what dogs can tell us about cognition, social bonding, and communication. These university labs are doing something really special: they're making dog science accessible, bringing it into classrooms, and training the next generation of people who will go on to understand our dogs even more deeply. That feels important. That feels like the future being built right now. Skyler: And then there's the A I angle, which I find genuinely fascinating. Technology is starting to play a real role in how we understand dogs. There are researchers using machine learning — that's a kind of A I — to analyze dog vocalizations. Different barks, whines, growls — and A I systems are getting better and better at detecting patterns in those sounds that correlate with specific emotional states. Is this dog anxious? Playful? Alerting to something? Asking for attention? Skyler: There are also computer vision tools being trained to read dog body language — the position of the ears, the tail, the weight distribution in the body — things that experienced dog trainers can pick up intuitively but that are really hard to teach quickly. A I can process thousands of hours of video and start to map those signals in ways that might one day help everyday pet owners understand their dogs better. Skyler: Now, I want to be clear — we are still in early days with a lot of this. Dogs are complex, and no algorithm is going to replace the kind of deep knowing that comes from years of living with a dog. Nobody knew Frosty like the people who loved Frosty. That knowing is irreplaceable. But as a tool, as a way of asking better questions and gathering better data — A I is opening doors we didn't even know were there. Skyler: And honestly, the more we learn — from the cortisol labs, from the behavior studies, from the aging research, from the breed intelligence work — the more it keeps coming back to the same thing. Dogs are remarkable. They are paying attention to us constantly. They are shaped by us, and they are shaping us right back. They are, in some very real sense, co-authors of the human story. And we are just beginning to understand the depth of that. Skyler: Frosty knew. He always knew. We're just catching up. Skyler: Alright, friends — before I let you go, I just want to sit with that for a second. We talked today about the smartest dog breeds and what intelligence even means for a dog. We explored the wild and wonderful discovery that dog brains have been quietly reshaping themselves over five thousand years of living alongside us. We met the researchers — the big national projects and the small university labs — who are dedicating their careers to understanding our dogs better and helping them live longer, healthier, happier lives. And we talked about how A I is becoming a new lens through which we're starting to see dogs more clearly. Skyler: Every single one of those stories is, at its core, a love story. Between humans and dogs. Between curiosity and care. And every time I do this show, I feel so grateful — grateful for the science, grateful for the researchers, grateful for all of you who tune in because you love dogs and you want to know more about them. And grateful, always, for Frosty. The best boy. The reason any of this exists. 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. Skyler: If today's episode made you smile or made you look at your dog a little differently, please subscribe so you never miss an episode — and share it with someone who loves dogs, or someone who just needs a little more joy in their week. That's pretty much everyone, right? You can find links to all the stories we talked about today in the show notes — check the link in show notes and explore to your heart's content. Skyler: Until next time — hug your dogs, tell them they're good, and stay curious. We'll see you soon. And Frosty — this one's for you, buddy. Always.