To test the dog’s word recognition, the researchers spread familiar toys in a room and sent him in to fetch them by name. After establishing that he could do that, they tossed a new toy into the mix and used a novel word to request it. Instead of blanking, Rico usually picked out the unfamiliar toy–later remembering it by its assigned moniker. Such “fast mapping” is common in human toddlers, but scientists had never seen it in another species until now. The researchers conclude that the cognitive mechanisms for language may have evolved long before humans started talking. Could a border collie learn to say “Weihnachtsmann” with a symbolic flick of the tail? Don’t rule it out. “For psychologists,” says Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, “dogs may be the new chimpanzees.”
