BEFORE Jane Goodall’s pioneering study of wild chimpanzees, most of us believed that tool-use and especially tool-making were exclusively human activities. Goodall was intrigued when she first observed a chimp poking a stick into a termite mound, waiting a minute, pulling out the stick, and then licking off the termites.
But a Border Collie named Gurr and his toy-making is one notch above chimp termite-fishing.
On 13th August 2005 I set out for a hike with a friend, Kanako, and the large handsome Border Collie mix.
We set out from Sacramento County to hike the little-known Bassi Cabin loop trail. The hike is a symphony of coniferous forest, running water, and glacier-polished granite.
I walked down through the trees, Gurr ran ahead to be certain that there were no ferocious Golden Retrievers in our path, stopped to sniff the shrubbery, ran back to check up on us, and then ran forward again. When we came to some large Jeffrey pines, we turned off the trail for the short cross-country leg of our adventure. In a few minutes, we came to the creek. Gurr promptly jumped into the water, and when he came out, we walked downstream for about 200 m, before crossing over. We followed a game trail to Bassi cabin, which is still occasionally used by the Bassi family.
The cabin itself is fairly ordinary, but the backdrop is gorgeous: the steep face of a gigantic granite boulder, flanked by conifers, towers over the cabin. About 100 m past the cabin, my friend Kanako and I sat down by the creek for lunch.
Unlike humans, Gurr thinks that a lunch break is for playing fetch. He prefers to fetch big sticks, rather than small ones, because the heavier sticks give his neck muscles a better workout. Gurr managed to find a nice piece of wood of the right weight. Then, to my surprise, he started chomping down on one end. He is not normally a very chewy dog. When Gurr has excess energy–which is most of the time–he usually runs, swims, or digs. But the wood chips were flying, and I wondered what he was up to. My question was answered a few minutes later, when Gurr brought the wood chunk to me, knowing that I would throw it for him. Initially, the wood chunk was too large for Gurr to grip comfortably in his mouth; so he chewed a handle on one end!
The canine craftsmanship had nothing to do with high-priority survival, and everything to do with lower-priority preparation for play. As an indicator of cognitive function, toy-making trumps tool-making. In terms of intelligence, chimpanzees have nothing on Border Collies!
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Larry lives in California and is a regular reader and contributor to this weblog. The picture is of Gurr.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Well, Border Collies are the top of the canine intelligence tree, having the reasoning ability of a 7 year old human. Now, if Gurr was really, really clever he’d have made a hockey-stick and got all his ‘independent’ friends to make one too using essentially the same method. The IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Canine Craftsmanship – would have been pleased too!
Paul,
I’ll pass that suggestion on to Gurr soon; at the moment, he’s busy rewiring my neighbor’s condo. That’s the problem with Border Collies; they’re the quintessential working dogs. Don’t let their striking good looks fool you; they don’t usually make good pets for urbanites. If a typical BC doesn’t have a job to do–like herding sheep–during all of his daylight hours, he’ll create one. And we silly humans may not appreciate it.
Here’s a link to some stories about the darker side of Border Collies, written by people who truly love their dogs. I’ll admit to deriving some perverse pleasure from reading these accounts.
http://tinyurl.com/56seek
Thanks Larry,
We lost our 12 year old Border Collie to bone cancer last year. 2 weeks later we ended up with a rescue dog – a Border Collie/Saluki cross. A Colluki? He’s so clever he has his own weblog:
http://colluki.blogspot.com/
We took the Border Collie and bred them into the Australian Red kelpie which is without doubt the smartest animal on the planet. 🙂
I agree on the Kelpie, Janama. Ours, the daughter of a top working dog, will convert just about anything to a toy, including possums. I suspect there might be a bit of Dingo in the breed as well.
BTW when you cross a Jack Russell with a Shitzu you end up with a JackShit.
Border Collies are the heroes of NZ and Australian sheep farming. Beautiful animals. They are keen to work even as pups – if there are no sheep handy they’ll round up the poultry. Their great temperament and intelligence has been achieved by single-minded breeding: Nobody cares what the dog looks like but if it doesn’t perform it wont last long on any farm.
Jennifer,
Thanks. When you find the time, please delete the redundant posting.
One of the messages that ended up in e-mail jail was about DIY climate change research. One of these days, I’ll post that in the same location. But first, I need to contact a certain outdoor photographer, to see if we can use one of his pictures.
Here’s how smart a Kelpie is 🙂
I lived with a Red Cloud Kelpie for 14 years. One day a Staffie had a go at him and was jaw locked (as they do) onto his chest with my Red standing over him. My Red raised his head and frantically shook it from side to side, for a split second the staffie went Duh? and relaxed the grip, the Red had him in the air and slammed onto the tiled kitchen floor in a second. 🙂 After 2 more flights in the air and back onto the tiles the Red eventually marched the Staf to the door.
He was a wonderful close friend, we did everything together 24/7 – I miss him.
Well done Gurr! It has often been alleged that the animal kingdom rarely if ever displays altruism let alone toolmaking. I know different. Yesterday Pam and I and Tam (Lab/Shep cross) met up with Pat and her Bomber (very big Ridgeback), and the dogs got into their usual ball games, chasing, pinching each other’s, and so on. In the dusk we finally lost Bomber’s ball, and he was inconsolable. Today a young Somali-Australian lad spotted the missing ball, threw it for Tam who at once knew it was Bomber’s and carried it for the next 2-3 km in hopes of meeting up with Bomber, we didn’t so he brought it home and will not allow us to touch it. By contrast he is more than careless with his own ball, a cast-off from our Tennis, and drops it at every interesting sniffing point (he knows we have plenty more). But Bomber’s ball today became a sacred trust worthy of the Da Vinci Code.
I have had 5 handsome Irish Setters. Some people say they are only good looks but no brains.
Nothing could be more wrong! They are just a bit sensitive and you can never speak harshly to them.
My former dog rescued a couple of animals.
…..and you could have a whole conversation with the dog and he understood EVERTHING!
Could that indicate that you are barking mad, Ann?
Ann wrote:
“…..and you could have a whole conversation with the dog and he understood EVERTHING!”
Oh yeah? Gurr can do that. And he can correct my grammar too!
So is Gurr an Internet gramma policedog;)??
Ann Novek wrote:
“So is Gurr an Internet gramma policedog;)??”
No Ann, he’s not. My keyboard is too small for a 30-kg dog to type accurately.
Gurr has always understood me, but it took a long time for me to understand BorderCollieSpeak. The breakthrough was on another outing. We were returning from a day-hike to Round Lake in the Echo-Carson area (Northern Sierras). Gurr ran 50 m ahead, sat down, and started howling. What was that all about?
From a human perspective, it sounded lonely, but Gurr was having a great time with his human hiking buddy. The second possibility: Gurr had smelled a mountain lion, and was saying: Don’t mess with us!
Acting on that assumption, I walked up to Gurr, and started howling too. He was so happy to hear me getting in on the act!
Days later, a lightbulb flashed on in my brain. Why do wolves howl? It’s about territory. Here’s what Gurr was saying:
I’m a mountain dog. I really like it here. Let’s make this our new home. And coyotes are not welcome in the Larry-and-Gurr Territory. (There are no wild wolves in California.)
That explained why he was so sad when we got back to the parking lot, and I had to lift him into the back of the car. He refused to get in voluntarily.
the other day a lady was walking her desexed poodle boy when a big black mixture of everything dog, with balls, ran out and ferociously attacked him. The poodle beat the shit out of the big black dog, they are German Hunting Dogs BTW. 🙂
Reading the dark side stories brought back memories.
Luckily we never had the chewing problems. Worst was his soap addiction, but he did once decide to eat most of the contents of his bean bag which made clearing up after him more challenging. But he loved the vacuum (and being vacuumed), he loved hosepipes & was a dab paw at opening doors. Never managed to train him to close them though, or perhaps he’d just trained me to do that for him.
His best trick was I’d get back from work and he’d rush to the kitchen, pull open the draw, get his lead out & be ready for him to walk me. Same draw held his treats and he never helped himself to those. Someone should make a paw-sized keyboard and I’m sure it’d spawn a wave of collie blogs.
When I was in high school, my cattle dog, never did anything wrong, even when we moved into town, & he had no cattle to work.
Then one day he started chewing on the lace part of my foot ball. It was quite yuk, even for a boy.
He did this 3 times, with new replacement laces, until I finally woke up. When I left a 3″ tail of lace hanging out, he could pick it up, & play football with us.
It was perfect when I was asked to practice goal kicking. I could practice for hours, & skip would fetch the ball, & still want more, when I was worn out. He would roll the ball along with his nose, until the lace came up, & he could grab it.
When chasing the ball, he would duck under the wire fence, but always jumped it, [over 3 Ft] with the ball hanging from his mouth, comming back.
Psychologist Stanley Coren is the author of The Intelligence of Dogs. The book emphasizes the biddable aspect of canine intelligence. Border Collies were rated as #1, Poodles as #2, and Australian Cattle Dogs as #10. Here’s a link to the wikipedia article about Coren’s book.
http://tinyurl.com/63wq69
The article did not mention Coren’s experiments on canine ingenuity. He measured the times needed for dogs to get at a treat that was not readily accessible. Obvious caveat: Some dogs, like Border Collies, are less food-motivated than others. Although the experiments attempted to measure the former, they were also unintentionally measuring the latter. This may partially explain the fact that BCs did not come out on top of the ratings in this category.
Two additional caveats: Coren did not have megabucks to fund his research. His intelligence rankings of various dog breeds should be regarded as preliminary. And some individual dogs within a given breed are more intelligent than average dogs within a higher-rated breed.
The Australian Cattle Dog they reference is the Blue Heeler not the Kelpie.
I had a friend stay with me who had a blue heeler – two male dogs in one house was a trip that’s for sure 🙂 – one day he was proudly reading me a book about how the blue was developed. When he got to the last page he paused awkwardly and I eventually got him to read the final line – They finally added Kelpie to give the blue some intelligence 🙂
My Kelpie reckoned German Shepherds were stupid – he would sneer at any he came across and abuse them from the other side of a street.
Having been a drover and worked with sheep and cattle dogs there are endless stories about which is the smartest but my blue heeler identifies and digs out scotch thistles which I think is a good effort.
She has also learnt a little blacksmithing. Show her a red hot poker and she’ll either make a spring for your throat or a bolt for the door.
nice one drongo 🙂
I’m surrounded by your type at the moment – there’s one black with about 8 – 10 greens.
Gurr the Amateur Physicist
A few years ago, Gurr and I did the longer version of the Silver Fork hike, which Jennifer mentioned in her blog post about the Snow Plants of the Northern Sierra.
http://tinyurl.com/q7strr
On a hike, Gurr will often run ahead, jump into some water, and then run back. On this particular outing, Gurr jumped into the creek, swam out to the middle, and found that his top swimming speed was the same as the speed of the fast-moving current. He was tiring rapidly, and was frightened. I went to the edge of the creek, and called to him.
Gurr desperately wanted to come to me in order to feel safe, but he knew that if he swam towards me, he’d reach the bank 15 m downstream from where I was standing. I think that that’s remarkable. Despite his panic, Gurr was able to able to do some rudimentary physics calculations involving his swimming speed, the speed of the current, and the vector sum of the two.
I knew what he was thinking; so I went 15 m downstream, and called him again. Then he swam directly towards the bank, and the current carried him straight to me.
That same mental ability makes Gurr a ho-hum frisbee dog. Some dogs will make spectacular leaps into the air in order to catch the flying disk. Not Gurr. Even when the frisbee is following a curved path, he does some quick physics calculations, runs to the spot where the frisbee will be 2 seconds later, and waits for the frisbee to come to him!
The ideal drover’s dog in outback Aus is usually a small kelpie. Blue heelers, collies and other “big” dogs usually die from heat stress but a small kelpie can survive on a [very small]meal every three days and water little and often.
Their dedication to their responsibilities is legendary and [luckily] food holds little interest for them. They are all skin, bone, muscle and brains and almost no stomach!
An animal with such attitude is a great companion.
I forgot to mention that they are also about 50% lolling tongue which is their cooling mechanism.
Actually, I thought Gurr was an excellent human trainer. When I hiked with Larry and Gurr, Gurr would run ahead and disappear. When he returned, Larry would give him a belly rub, which Gurr loved. Larry explained to me that he wanted Gurr to have something to look forward to when he returned as a bit of positive reinforcement. It occurred to me that Gurr would purposely disappear so he get a belly rub upon his return. Who was training who?
I wonder how many Australians of today know the whole story of the dog on the tucker box?
Larry and Ian, the stories of people and dogs would surely fill volumes and they always go right to the heart.
I was once a member of a small group of ringers [stockmen] who got a contract to run scrubbers [muster wild cattle] in the mulga country west of Stonehenge, Q. and to help us do the job we “collected” about 20 stray dogs from town by putting aniseed solution on our boots so the dogs would follow us back to the truck. We then gave them a feed and threw them into the cattle crate and headed bush.
During the six week long job most of the dogs died of heat stress but they would not give up.
They were like a bunch of delinquents finally given a purpose in life. They gave so much for so little and made our venture a success.
It would seem likely that the dog intelligence test mentioned above carries a similar urban bias to the standard IQ tests for humans. If I were to be lost in the bush the very last animal I would want with me would be a f@#$%g poodle and the last person I would want with me would be a poodle owner.
A study on dog’s intelligence showed that border collies were the most intelligent dogs and chow chows the least intelligent. I think rottweillers were on the bottom as well…
Ian wrote:
“It would seem likely that the dog intelligence test mentioned above carries a similar urban bias to the standard IQ tests for humans.”
To a certain extent, that’s true. The most-quoted rankings in Coren’s book are about tractability–quickness in learning the standard obedience commands.
There are also ratings for a few categories of working dogs. For example, Coren gives rankings for which of the various terrier breeds are the most efficient ratters.
I briefly mentioned the getting-at-the-food type of canine ingenuity. Coren sawed the legs off a table, such that there was only a couple of inches from the floor to the bottom of the table. Then he put a dog biscuit directly under the table, out of reach of the dogs’ muzzles.
Some breeds–like the Norwegian Elkhound–did surprisingly well. Apparently Elkhounds are very food-motivated, but are less motivated about pleasing people. Anyway, after reflecting on the novel situation, some of the dogs reached under the table, and used their front paws as a sweeping tool to push the treat out from under the table.
If I remember correctly, this was the only experiment that Coren himself performed. Most of the other ratings were based on personal experience in non-laboratory settings, and on interviews with experts.
Coren also explains the universal body language of dogs and the meanings of various types of barks. The former was very helpful to me, but I don’t think that I’m skilled enough to apply the latter.
Several years ago, I saw an advert for an electronic device that was supposed to interpret the various types of dog barks. Apparently, it didn’t sell very well; I haven’t seen any of the ads for awhile. I don’t remember the name of the product, and that may have been a factor in the poor sales performance. It should have been called a Bark Code Reader. 😛