BY: SAMANTHA BARTLETT, DVM

Researchers from the Family Dog Project conducted a study to decipher how dogs mentally see their toys. The study, published in Animal Cognition, concluded that familiar objects are comprised of a multi-modal image in a dog’s mind. Dogs combine different sensors to form the image including the way the object looks and smells.

The researchers used a group of gifted word learner dogs (dogs that have learned the names of objects) along with 10 typical family dogs in the study. The dogs were trained to fetch a toy associated with a reward. They received treats for choosing the named toy over several distractor toys. The researchers noted how the dogs searched for the specified toy that was always hidden among four other toys. The searches were conducted both with the lights on and in the dark. Although all dogs were successful in both light and dark conditions, they searched longer in the dark.

The researchers noted the dogs relied both on visual and smell to identify the named toy, however, they preferred to rely on their sight over their sense of smell. The dogs did rely on their sense of smell more in the dark, but still only slightly more. Researchers concluded from this study that when presented with a specific object, dogs made note of both visual and olfactory features of the object in order to identify it mentally.

The original study can be accessed at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-022-01639-z.