The Intelligence of Dogs

I saw an article earlier this morning about the intelligence of dogs.

They did some experiments with dogs as to their ability to figure out basic arithmetic problems, and, according to what it said, they can handle number up to around 5. Like if you have five pieces of meat, maybe, they can keep track of how many they have left.

Maybe that's not the best example. Since my dog could keep track of a whole truck of meat.

As to the linguistic abilities of dogs, they can learn the meaning of somewhere under 200 words. And of course they can pick up your tone of voice, anger, all that.

An interesting detail is they don't seem to understand equity, I think the word is, like equal or lesser or greater values of things. Like say you gave one dog a steak and your dog a biscuit. The fact that each got something makes it OK, but if the one dog got a steak and your dog got nothing, that would not be good.

I like to think my dog is very very smart. But it sounds like, from the article, that if they have the level of a two or three year old child, you're getting about the best they can be.