Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
There.
John Pilly, a chipper 82. Come on. Come
back. Come back. Hurry. Started working
with dogs as a psychology professor.
Walk up. Walk up, girl. Walk up. Walk
up. Now he's got one of the smartest
dogs around. Come on. Come on, girl. And
I've come to check out what she can do.
Good girl. Chaser is a six-year-old
female border collie. A breed famously
skilled at hering sheep. She was born to
live in the Scottish mountains. Chase,
tunnel, tunnel, tunnel and herd sheep.
Go, go there. Be a shepherd. John has
taught Chaser to tend an extremely large
herd. That was a sheep. But there are no
real sheep in it. I can't believe
Chaser's herd is made up of toys. About
a thousand of them.
And she knows the name of every single
one of these. I hope.
Sailor
John has assigned a name to each one.
Never forget. Oh, cuz it's a and taught
those names to chase her. It's an
elephant. Okay. She has about 12
elephants.
Apparently, sometimes John ran out of
stuffed animals. Uh-oh. These are a pair
of my shorts. Oh my god. No, no, cuz
that's one of her toys. John claims that
Chaser remembers the name of every
single object in the pile.
Personally, I find that hard to believe.
I don't have time to test Chaser's
memory on a thousand names, but I will
test her on a random sample.
John and Chaser go into the house so
they can't see. So, I'm going to get a
handful of toys out of this pile and see
if Chaser can identify them indoors in
here. With John and Chaser out of the
room, I lay some of the toys out behind
the couch.
Hey, there's lover.
Now it's time to see if Chaser really
remembers their names. All ready for
Chaser. Come on, Chaser. Come to Neil.
Okay. Okay, come on down. Quick, Chaser,
find Inky.
Well, she got one right.
Find seal.
[Music]
Whoa. And that one, too. Okay. Ready,
Chaser? Now, you might be wondering
what's going on behind the couch. Like,
is John handing her the toys? Find Craw
Dad. Let's check our hidden camera.
[Music]
Find sugar.
I asked Chaser to find nine toys and she
got every single one right. Have a good
one. And remember, I picked the toys
randomly from this huge pile. Neither
John nor Chaser saw which ones I picked.
Come back. Come on multiple trials with
John and others. Chaser consistently
aces her test. There's a thousand toys
here. That doesn't like spook you. It
makes me happy.
Let's see what she does when we
challenge her with a new toy she's never
seen or heard the name of. I smuggled
this into your house. It's a Charles
Darwin doll.
Okay. So, I put seven toys behind the
couch plus Darwin.
Chaser's never seen Darwin. Hasn't even
ever heard the name Darwin. So, we're
going to see if she picks out Darwin by
inference. That's what we're going to
check. I'm going to call her down now.
Chaser, come on back. Let's have some
more fun. First, I'm going to ask Chaser
to find a couple of toys she already
knows.
Find Sugar.
Excellent. Chaser. Chaser. Good. Okay.
Put in a bin. Find Cordad.
Excellent. Excellent. A good job.
Okay. Put in the tub. Put in the tub.
Okay, here it comes. A name she's never
heard before. Find
Darwin.
So, while searching for the other toys,
Chaser knew exactly which one to pick up
right away. But now, she seems to have
to think about which one might be
Darwin. It's taking her longer.
[Music]
She takes so long. I call her back.
Chase her.
Find Darwin.
[Music]
Finally, she makes a choice.
Darwin is got Darwin. I can't believe
it. Chaser's never seen that doll
before. Darwin. That's Darwin. You're
good girl. Yet somehow she made the
connection that the name she'd never
heard before. You found Darwin. Went
with the one toy she didn't recognize.
It's a good girl. Chaser's not the only
dog to do this. That's Darwin. And
what's more, dogs like Chaser have shown
that they will remember the connection
they made between new name and new toy.
This is yet another way they can learn.
What's interesting about seeing how dogs
are learning these new words is that
people thought this was really unique to
humans. That this was something that was
only humans do this. But it seems that
no, that's not the case. That dogs can
make these inferences about what novel
utterances mean and they can remember
them for quite a long period. Now, this
looks just like what little children are
doing.
[Music]