Dog Breeds Tested
12/29/2022
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Most studies of dog breeds’ behavior group breeds into multi-breed aggregations like retrievers or scenthounds in order to get big enough sample sizes.

From Nature, here’s a rare study that gets a big enough sample size to look at 1002 dogs across 12 individual breeds, plus Mixed, and were given 2 hour behavioral/cognition tests:

Published: 29 December 2022
Breed differences in social cognition, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris)
Saara Junttila, Anna Valros, Katariina Mäki, Heli Väätäjä, Elisa Reunanen & Katriina Tiira
Scientific Reports volume 12, Article number: 22529 (2022)

Note that these tend to be Serious Breeds — e.g., over half of the Belgian Shepherd Malinois participants were employed police dogs—and most of the individual dogs were participants in “dog sports.” No weird breeds like French or English bulldogs made the minimum sample size of 40:

Most participant dogs were privately owned pet dogs. We did not have information on the training history of most dogs, apart from 31 police dogs (see Suppl. Table S2). A large proportion of the pet dogs were actively used in various dog sports (e.g., agility, scent work, obedience, etc.), based on discussions the testers have had with participating owners. Most dogs (including the police dogs) lived inside the house with their owners.

And it’s from Finland, where the people tend to be smart, serious, and outdoorsy, so quite possibly the popular dog breeds there are too.

Abstract

The extraordinary genetic and behavioural diversity of dog breeds provides a unique opportunity for investigating the heritability of cognitive traits, such as problem-solving ability, social cognition, inhibitory control, and memory. Previous studies have mainly investigated cognitive differences between breed groups, and information on individual dog breeds is scarce. As a result, findings are often contradictory and inconsistent. The aim of this study was to provide more clarity on between-breed differences of cognitive traits in dogs. We examined the performance of 13 dog breeds (N = 1002 dogs) in a standardized test battery. Significant breed differences were found for understanding of human communicative gestures, following a human’s misleading gesture, spatial problem-solving ability in a V-detour task, inhibitory control in a cylinder test, and persistence and human-directed behaviour during an unsolvable task. Breeds also differed significantly in their behaviour towards an unfamiliar person, activity level, and exploration of a novel environment. No significant differences were identified in tasks measuring memory or logical reasoning. Breed differences thus emerged mainly in tasks measuring social cognition, problem-solving, and inhibitory control. Our results suggest that these traits may have come under diversifying artificial selection in different breeds. These results provide a deeper understanding on breed-specific traits in dogs.

A few findings: the friendliest breed at greeting a stranger (the lady tester) was the golden retriever. The most overexcited was the Australian kelpie. The most fearful/aggressive was the Shetland sheepdog.

Discussion
We found significant differences between individual dog breeds for five of the seven cognitive tests included in the test battery. Breed differences were found for measures of social cognition, persistence, inhibitory control, and spatial problem-solving ability. Differences were also evident for activity level, greeting of an unfamiliar person, and exploration of a novel environment. In contrast, no breed differences were found for short-term memory or logical reasoning.

Both inhibitory control and social cognition are likely to be especially important traits during artificial selection of dog breeds, both historically and in the present day. For example, inhibitory control may be a valued trait in herding dogs, which are required to inhibit their predatory responses. The Border Collie and Australian Shepherd were among the highest-scoring breeds in the cylinder test, indicating high inhibitory control. In contrast, the Malinois and German Shepherd were some of the lowest-scoring breeds. These breeds are often used in working roles requiring high responsiveness, which is often associated with low inhibitory control and high impulsivity. Human-directed behaviour and socio-cognitive abilities may be highly valued in pet dogs and breeds required to work closely with people, such as herding dogs and retrievers45. In line with this, the Kelpie, Golden Retriever, Australian Shepherd, and Border Collie spent the largest proportion of their time on human-directed behaviour during the unsolvable task. In contrast, the ability to work independently may be important for various working dogs, such as detection dogs. In our study, the two breeds which were most likely to be completely independent during the unsolvable task (spending 0% of their time on human-directed behaviour) were the German Shepherd and Malinois.

In conclusion, many of our results seem to reflect the breeds’ original or current function, but several breed differences could not be easily explained by breed function alone. … For example, the Golden Retriever differed significantly from the Labrador Retriever in the unsolvable task and the gesture test, even though both belong to the retriever group. Our findings therefore highlight the importance of investigating behavioural differences between individual breeds rather than only relying on breed group categorizations.

We found no significant breed differences for logical reasoning or memory, and these results seem to be in line with previous studies. However, it is important to note that even though we did not find differences between these specific breeds, this does not mean they do not exist between other breeds. For example, we did not include ancient breeds, hounds, or terriers in our analysis. Therefore, more research on individual breed differences on these cognitive traits is warranted.

Back in the 1970s, my impression was that Afghan hounds were particularly stupid.

On the other hand, many dog breeds have changed a lot over my lifetime. For instance, I don’t recall that the Belgian Malinois was quite such a superdog when I was a kid, whereas its now who you want for canine companionship when you are off to kill Osama bin Laden.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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