Collie Chaser Is Smartest Dog, Has Vocabulary of 1,022 Words

If you’re thinking about getting a pet and you don’t know which to choose between a dog and a cat, you may as well go for a border collie. Chaser, a border collie, has just been named the dog with the largest vocabulary in the world.

Researchers at the Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, have adopted Chaser and decided to see the extent of her learning ability: in just three years, she learned over 1,000 words and knows how to classify objects by shape.

The two researchers, Alliston Reid and John Pilley, also tested Chaser constantly to see how she was doing and went to extreme lengths to make sure they don’t influence Chaser in any way, DailyTech reports.

They were amazed to see that not only did she learn the name of her 1,022 toys, but that she’d also developed the ability to classify them by shape, both of which are a first in an animal ever.

Right now, Chaser is not only the smartest dog ever, but she also matches the abilities of a 3-year-old baby, it is being said.

“Toys were presented to Chaser individually, and the name of the toy would be repeated in order to help Chaser learn to recognize it,” DailyTech writes of the learning process.

“To make sure Chaser was actually learning the names of these toys, she was tested on a regular basis. Tests consisted of researchers choosing 20 toys at random, and allowing Chaser to retrieve them when the toy’s name was called,” the e-zine further writes.

“The toys were put in an entirely different room so that researchers could not ‘unintentionally give Chaser cues about which toy to choose’,” DailyTech says.

As the video below will show, sometimes the tester could not see the toys, being separated from them by a sheet of fabric – also to prevent any attempts at influencing the dog in any way.

“Out of a total of 838 tests over a three year time span, researchers reported that Chaser chose at least 18 out of 20 correct toys when the toy’s name was called,” the e-zine says.

The only thing that Chaser can’t do is communicate in any other way than by pointing with her paw and nose, researchers say. Below is the video with some of the tests conducted on the dog.