Some dogs aren’t just good boys and girls — they’re geniuses.
Certain pups can do more than recognize the names of their favorite chew toys — they can actually group their playthings by function, like fetching or tugging, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, a study published this week in Current Biology reveals.
It’s a mental trick scientists call “label extension.” Humans use it when we realize a hammer and a rock can both drive a nail, or that a mug and a glass both count as “cups.”
For animals, it usually takes years of training in captivity. But these smart pups picked it up simply by playing with their owners at home.
“This was done in a natural setup, with no extensive training,” lead researcher Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest told the news site Ars Technica.
“It’s just owners playing for a week with the toys. So it’s a natural type of interaction.”
Seven so-called “gifted word learner” (GWL) dogs — six Border Collies and one Blue Heeler — took part in the experiment. These four-legged prodigies had already shown they could learn dozens of toy names through everyday play.
First, owners taught them to associate the commands “pull” and “fetch” not with single toys, but with groups of toys used for those games. Once the dogs proved they could grab the right item on command, researchers threw them a curveball: brand-new toys introduced only through play, without any labels.
When asked to select a toy for fetching or pulling, the dogs got it right more often than pure chance would allow. In other words, they weren’t barking up the wrong tree.
The breakthrough shows that dogs can go beyond simple word-object matching. They can extend meaning to new situations, much like toddlers learning that very different objects can belong to the same category.
“The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function,” Fugazza explained.
“So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”
The findings build on years of Hungarian research into canine cognition.
In 2022, the same team discovered that dogs store multi-sensory “mental images” of their toys. They don’t just remember what a ball looks like — they recall how it smells, too.
That’s why pups can still retrieve their favorite squeaky toy in the dark, even if it takes longer.
A 2023 study tackled “spatial bias” — the tendency of dogs to follow a pointing gesture as a directional cue, rather than focusing on the object itself.
Researchers found that smarter breeds with sharper vision were more likely to pay attention to what the object actually was. That thinking pattern put them closer to human toddlers.
Visual acuity even correlated with head shape. Dogs with shorter skulls, which pack more retinal ganglion cells into the center of their vision, processed information more like humans and showed less spatial bias.
Now, the latest study adds another bone to the pile: dogs aren’t just memorizing labels, they’re learning abstract categories.
Owners involved in the project said the tests looked a lot like normal playtime. A round of tug-of-war or fetch with a new toy was enough to give their pets the context needed to classify it later.
“For these new toys, they’ve never heard the name,” Fugazza said.
“But they have played either pull or fetch, and so the dog has to choose which toy was used to play which game.”
Photographs released with the study show the canine Einsteins in action. Gaia, a border collie, grinned while posing with a mountain of toys.
Whisky, another participant, clutched a pizza-shaped squeaky. Arya looked smitten with her well-worn plaything, while Gadget curled up with a beloved plush.
The dogs’ success rates were well above chance, confirming they weren’t just sniffing in the dark. But researchers say the exact mental process remains a mystery.
“We have shown that dogs learn object labels really fast, and they remember them for a long period, even without rehearsing,” Fugazza said.
“And I think the way they extend labels also beyond perceptual similarities gives an idea of the breadth of what these labels could be for dogs.”
That suggests dogs may possess more advanced language-related skills than previously thought. And while scientists don’t expect canines to start holding conversations, the results raise new questions about how animals learn and categorize the world around them.
For now, the furry participants are happy to keep playing fetch — or tug — with their favorite toys.
The study leaves the door open for further research into how widespread this ability is among dogs, and whether it extends to other species.
The next step may involve testing whether average dogs, not just the “gifted word learners,” can also generalize functions. If so, the ability could be more common than researchers thought.
Until then, Gaia, Whisky, Arya and Gadget remain the top dogs of canine cognition — proving that sometimes, playtime is serious science.
