Rico (border collie)
Rico (* Oct. 1994 , † 2008 ) was a border collie - dog from Germany . He gained fame after appearing on the 1999 television show “ Wetten, dass ..? “Had shown that he could assign 77 words to the respective toys and fetch the objects from an adjoining room on command.
This was followed by appearances in other television programs, for example stern TV . Rico was finally able to distinguish more than 250 different words.
His ability to learn words has been scientifically investigated at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and published in the renowned journal Science . It was proven that the dog learned through so-called " fast mapping ", a kind of elimination process that had previously only been demonstrated in human children.
See also
- Marocco , trained English horse
- Lady Wonder , trained American horse
- Kluger Hans , trained German horse
- Koko , a gorilla who learned sign language
- Alex , a gray parrot who could use numerous words
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bild der Wissenschaft , accessed on May 27, 2019
- ↑ That he is not alone in this, but is also exceeded, shows a scientific publication from February 2011, in which a Border Collie is reported that can distinguish 1022 objects. doi : 10.1016 / j.beproc.2010.11.007
- ↑ "Dogs listen to the word" MPG press release (June 10, 2004)
Web links
- Kaminski et al .: Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for Fast Mapping Science, Vol. 304 Abstract
- Paul Bloom: Can a Dog learn a Word? Science, Vol. 304, 1605 (PDF file; 234 kB)
- Article about Rico in the Washington Post
- Article in MaxPlanckResearch 4/2009 The dog thinks for itself (PDF file; 2380 kB)