My Lab, Vicky, doesn't know as many words, but she is much smarter.
She listens intently to my commands, and then decides if she wants to do it, or not.
NY Times
Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl!
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: January 17, 2011
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Chaser, a border collie who lives in Spartanburg, S.C.,
has the largest vocabulary of any known dog.
She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that displays unexpected depths
of the canine mind and may help explain how children acquire language.
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He bought Chaser as a puppy in 2004 from a local breeder and
started to train her for four to five hours a day.
He would show her an object, say its name up to 40 times,
then hide it and ask her to find it, while repeating the name all the time.
She was taught one or two new names a day, with monthly revisions and reinforcement for any names she had forgotten.
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Children pick up about 10 new words a day until, by the time they leave high school,
they know around 60,000 words.
Chaser learned words more slowly but faced a harder task:
Each sound was new and she had nothing to relate it to, whereas children
learn words in a context that makes them easier to remember.
For example, knives, forks and spoons are found together.
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A Nova episode on animal intelligence, in which Chaser stars, will be broadcast on Feb. 9.
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