Border Collie Has Vocabulary of More Than 1,000 Words

Two psychologists have taken the notion behind the wonderful children’s book I’ll Teach My Dog 100 Words, and upped it tenfold. They taught their dog 1,022 words, to be precise. That’s a world’s record by a mile.

Chaser, a border collie, not only knows the names of all these objects, but she can categorize them by function and shape if asked.

The psychologists, from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, had set out to see if there is a limit to the number of words a border collie can learn, according to New Scientist. They worked with her for hours a day for three years, and the result is apparently that the sky’s the limit when it comes to vocabulary, at least for very well trained border collies.

Jake is wondering when they will try this on Labs. “What’s the big fuss about border collies and their great big brains? It’s always ‘border collies this’ and ‘border collies that’ ” he grouses.

Meanwhile, how many words do you think your dog knows? And how did your dog come by his vocabulary: Did you teach your dog specific items, or did he pick them up on his own?

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