This is a Scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Lucy Wong.

If you have a dog, you've probably tried to train it.

The basics, like sit and stay, plus of course not to go to the bathroom on your

rugs. And if your dog learns things quickly, you might start to think it's

really smart, but... If you really want to know about dog intelligence, you have to look at non-dogs as well to understand

what's special to dogs and what is just typical of groups they belong to.

Stephen Lee, a retired professor of psychology from the University of Exeter in the UK.

He and colleagues looked at dog intelligence in an animal intelligence context for a report in the journal learning and behavior.

Lee and his team looked at hundreds of published studies to compare dog

cognition with that of other animals. They found that dogs are adept at picking up on

social cues. It's good for example at using human pointing or following human gaze.

You're looking at what you're looking at.

We're not saying that dogs aren't good at those tasks, they are.

What we were saying is that there are some other animals that are just as good at them.

Like bottled-nosed dolphins and Gracials.

It's not something that's unique to dogs or indeed that's unexpected in dogs, given the sorts of animals dogs are.

Namely, they're domesticated.

They're derived from at least social hunters and important they're carnivores.

They belong to, you know, a big group of mammals that also includes cats, hyenas, otters, bears, and also the seals and sea lions, which we sometimes forget about but which of course And also very easy to train,

and also very easy to train, despite not being domestic.

And while dog cognition may not actually be exceptional, their noses definitely are.

Their sense of smell, the extraordinary things that they can discriminate, like which of two identical twins they're looking at or sniffing at.

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