Quotes & Sayings About Dogs Intelligence

So many people are doomed by their ambition and their gathered intelligence, their bank account and savings and loan intelligence. If there is any secret to life, that secret is not to try. Let it come to you: women, dogs, death, and creation. — Charles Bukowski

They were now their own unavoidable experiment, and were making themselves into many things they had never been before: augmented, multi-sexed, and most importantly, very long-lived, the oldest at that point being around two hundred years old. But not one whit wiser, or even more intelligent. Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since, dogs when we had been wolves. But also, despite that individual diminuation, finding ways to accumulate knowledge and power, compiling records, also techniques, practices, sciences
possibly smarter therefore as a species than as individuals, but prone to insanity either way ... — Kim Stanley Robinson

I've long suspected dogs of being much smarter than people; I was even certain they could speak, but there was only some kind of stubbornness in them. They're extraordinary politicians: they notice every human step. — Nikolai Gogol

Dogs (like rats) are multitalented but they are also not very smart the way humans are. A recent book, devoted to the intelligence of dogs, is 250+ pages long (Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs: A Guide to the Thoughts, Emotions, and Inner Lives of Our Canine Companions, 1994). Interestingly, despite careful qualifications by Coren regarding definitions, the ranking of breeds by intelligence literally made newspaper headlines. We are obviously fascinated by the notion that dogs - or at least certain breeds of dog - might, just might, be really, really smart. It all makes as much sense as evaluating humans on our ability to sniff for bombs or echo-locate. — Jean Donaldson

So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, courage, bad and good tempers. etc., are certainly transmitted. — Charles Darwin

What are dogs thinking?" the grand conclusion was this: they're thinking about what we're thinking. The dog-human relationship was not one-sided. With their high degree of social and emotional intelligence, dogs reciprocated our feelings toward them. They truly are First Friend. — Gregory Berns

By standard intelligence texts, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this
and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes! It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed; dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around. — Alexandra Horowitz

Intelligence is overrated. Two dogs who sniff each others' butts learn more about each other in a moment than many humans understand about those they've known for a lifetime. — James Rozoff

Despite the sisters' pretend rivalry and occasional squabbles, they were each other's staunchest ally and closest friend. Few people in Lillian's life had ever loved her except Daisy, who adored the ugliest stray dogs, the most annoying children, and things that needed to be repaired or thrown out altogether.
And yet for all their closeness, they were quite different. Daisy was an idealist, a dreamer, a mercurial creature who alternated between childlike whimsy and shrewd intelligence. Lillian knew herself to be a sharp-tongued girl with a fortress of defenses between herself and the rest of the world- a girl with well-maintained cynicism and a biting sense of humor. — Lisa Kleypas

Poor Cook, thought Captain, I must be kinder to her. She makes a splendid pet. How faithful she is! I always say you can't get the same love from a dog that you can from a human. So clever, too. I believe she understands every word I say. I believe they have souls, just like dogs. It's uncanny how canine a human can be, if you are kind to them and treat them well. I know for a fact that when some dogs in history died, their humans lay down on the grave and howled all night and refused food and pined away. It was just instinct, of course, not real intelligence, but all the same it makes you think. I believe that when a human does, it goes to a special heaven for humans, with kind dogs to look after it. — T.H. White

At least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing. — Charles Baxter

Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us? — Carl Sagan

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things
unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog ... — Terry Pratchett

Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves. — Deb Caletti

During mission planning, we had intelligence concerning dogs that might impede our goal and were part of the target's contingencies. The exact method used to neutralize aggressive dogs in the field is classified information. However, Special Ops has some really incredible dogs. In fact, during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, the highly trained men of SEAL Team Six had with them a uniquely trained dog as part of the mission. SEAL canines are not your standard bomb-sniffing dogs. The dog on the bin Laden mission was specially trained to jump from planes and rappel from helicopters while attached to its handler. The dog wore ballistic body armor, had a head-mounted infrared (night-vision) camera, and wore earpieces to take commands from the handler. The dog also had reinforced teeth, capped with titanium. I would not want to try the techniques this book recommends on this dog. Thank God he's on our side. — Cade Courtley

I thought that to get to know a desert it was enough to have been there. I thought that to have seen the dogs dying along the Cholula road, or to have seen the eyes of the lepers at Chiengmai gave me the right to talk about it. To have seen! To have been there! Rubbish! The world is not a book, it proves nothing. The spaces one has crossed were dark corridors with closed doors. The faces of the women to whom one gave oneself up completely: did they speak for anyone but themselves? The cities of man are secret. One walks along their streets, one sees them shine under one's feet, but one is not there, one never enters them. The dusty fields inhabited by people who are hungry, who wait patiently, are paradises of luxury and nourishment; shining at a vast distance from intelligence, at a vast distance from reason. They are not to be subjugated. — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

The mistake I had made, obviously, was in overestimating human intelligence. By and large, one can not deny certain of mankind's achievements, such as the invention of lamb chops and central heating, but many people are strangely unreceptive to nuance. The hint, the diplomatic nudge, the oblique statements
these very often pass straight over their heads, and man and dog find themselves looking at each other through a fog of incomprehension. Thus it was with the management and myself. Delightful and welcoming, they certainly were, but not, it seemed, too quick on the uptake. — Peter Mayle

So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it's wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn't it? That's just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it's the "cold" behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs 'cause they're so smart, doesn't it? — Jean Donaldson

Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship, creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not the highest and that therefore is simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent. The combination of their innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve as a bridge bewtween what is transient and what is eternal, between the finate and the infinate. — Dean Koontz

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all? — Jeffrey Kluger

As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy. — Peter Singer