Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/how-dogs-identify-toys-study/

Have you ever told your dog to go fetch a specific toy and they run off to find it?

They might search through a pile of toys before finding the one you asked for, but somehow, they seem to know which toy is which.

Researchers with the Family Dog Project, in partnership with the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, wanted to examine just how dogs identify their toys, so they conducted a study to figure it out.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Animal Cognition, studied 14 different dogs and tested their ability to recognize objects (toys) based on the object’s name.

The dogs were tested in both light and dark conditions to see if their ability to recognize an object changed based on the lighting.

Of the 14 test subjects, 10 were regular family dogs while the other four were “gifted word learners.” The Gifted word learner dogs had participated in a previous study that showed they each knew the names of over 20 dog toys!

In the study, researchers found that dogs could identify the difference between different toys using their senses, but the senses they used changed depending on the lighting.

When searching for a toy in light conditions, the dogs seemed to rely on vision. When searching for a toy in a dark room, however, the dogs relied on sniffing around and took a bit longer to find the correct object.

In the end, researchers concluded that dogs take in a variety of features on toys and identify them using both sight and smell, even when only briefly introduced to them.

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog