Gaby
A team at the University of Helsinki ran an extensive study to find which dog breeds are the smartest. From 2016 to 2022, animal behavior specialists tested the intelligence of 1,002 dogs from 13 breeds. The study included German Shepherds, Shetland Sheepdogs, Hovawarts, English Cocker Spaniels, Labrador Retrievers, Border Collies, Belgian Malinois, Golden Retrievers, Australian Kelpies, Finnish Lapphunds, Spanish Water Dogs, and mixed breeds. The series of ten tests, called smartDOG, was developed by one of the study’s authors, Katriina Tiira. The tests measured exploratory behavior, impulsivity, inhibitory control, social cognition, spatial problem‑solving, logical reasoning, and short‑term memory. The researchers expected the breeds to differ across most measures, and they did.
Who tops the list of smart dogs? Based on the results from all the tests, the top three breeds were the Belgian Malinois (35 points out of a possible 39), Border Collies (26 points), and Hovawarts (25 points). Tiira told Newsweek that, surprisingly, memory and logical reasoning didn’t vary by breed. Those traits may be shaped more by a dog’s training history and life experiences. Lead author Saara Huntila said the study had one major limitation: the team didn’t have information about the dogs’ training histories. While most of the dogs probably participated in dog sports or competitions, previous research suggests that extensive training and competition could have affected the test results.
The full paper appeared in the journal Scientific Reports. It said the research provides a more complete picture of how specific breeds behave, which could help people choose the right breed for particular tasks in the future.
Expert Opinion Among the top performers were Border Collies, which matches earlier work by Stanley Coren, author of the book The Intelligence of Dogs and professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of British Columbia. Commenting on the Finnish study, Coren defended some breeds that didn’t rank near the top. For example, Labradors scored lowest on spatial problem‑solving and inhibitory control in this study, but Coren said that doesn’t make them unintelligent. In his view, all the breeds in the study are smart. He warned against saying “Labradors are the dumbest breed,” comparing that kind of claim to taking ten Nobel laureates, ranking their intelligence, putting Marie Curie at the bottom, and calling her unintelligent. Coren used that analogy to stress that the test results depend on each dog’s individual qualities, not just breed-level intelligence.
