Skip to content
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Menu
  • Happy Health
  • Happy Mindset
  • Animal Wonders
  • About Us
    • Team
  • Subscribe
Happy News

Dogs Are Much Smarter Than We Thought

Groundbreaking research from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest has revealed that some dogs can categorize toys by function just like human infants, even when the objects look completely different from each other. The study, published in Current Biology, focused on Gifted Word Learner dogs who learned to associate toys with specific actions like “pull” or “fetch” during natural play sessions with their owners over just one week. Remarkably, when these dogs were later introduced to entirely new toys without hearing any labels, they could still correctly group them based on how they were meant to be used rather than how they looked.

Study author Claudia Fugazza explained that this ability mirrors human thinking, comparing it to how we understand that a rock and a hammer serve the same function despite looking nothing alike. The research suggests that dogs can form mental representations of objects based on their purpose, revealing sophisticated cognitive abilities related to language, memory, and categorization that scientists are only beginning to understand. This natural learning happened without extensive training, simply through owners playing games with their pets in familiar home environments. The discovery opens exciting new questions about canine intelligence and whether dogs without special word-learning abilities might also possess this remarkable capacity to think about objects in terms of their function rather than just their appearance.

PrevPreviousWhat Watching Geese Revealed About Great Leaders
NextBlue the Leopard Tortoise’s Recovery MiracleNext

Recent Articles

Happy News

This 1986 Thanksgiving Tradition Is EXPLODING Now

December 7, 2025

Gus the turkey has been spending Thanksgiving week much differently than the 46 million other unlucky gobblers slaughtered across the United States, as he trots through a sprawling animal sanctuary on the Colorado plains where staff stop every few steps to pet him, hug him, or even give him a

Read More
Happy News

You Won’t Believe What Happens When Music Is Played During Surgery

December 7, 2025

Under the harsh lights of an operating theatre in Delhi, India, a woman lies unconscious during gallbladder removal surgery while gentle flute music plays through headphones over her ears, and though she’s under general anesthesia with much of her brain silenced by drugs, her auditory pathway remains partly active in

Read More
Happy News

The 76 Year Old Who Bottle Feeds Puppies In A War Zone

December 6, 2025

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for foreign volunteers, 76 year old Bruce Perry of Savona, British Columbia thought his military experience, first aid training, and Ukrainian grandfather made him the perfect candidate, but after a series of interviews he was rejected for military

Read More
« Previous Next »
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Privacy Notice
  • Accessibility Notice
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Unsubscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Copyright © 2025 HappyNews.