15 Ways Your Dog Shows They’re Smarter Than You Think

Dogs have an awesome level of intelligence that goes way beyond just following commands. From sensing our emotions to figuring out tricky problems, they’re always showing us just how clever they really are. Today, we’re diving into some surprising ways your dog’s smarts shine in everyday life.

They’re masters of communication.

Your dog might figure out the best ways to tell you exactly what she wants. Many dogs have different whines or barks that mean different things. She might learn that a high-pitched whine gets her a treat while a lower one leads to a belly rub. And she’ll “talk” to you based on what she’s after. It’s pretty amazing how we start picking up on our dog’s unique way of communicating, too.

They love “dog-speak.”

Just like adults bond with babies using “baby-talk,” a study from the University of York’s Department of Psychology revealed that dogs are more interested in spending time with humans who use “dog-speak.” To catch their attention, dogs need to hear words that matter to them in a high-pitched, emotional voice. So squealing “Who’s a good boy?” in your highest pitch is actually a great way to bond with your pup.

They can imagine what they smell.

A study in the Journal of Comparative Psychology found that dogs actually form a “mental picture” of objects they’re tracking by smell. Whether it’s a ball, a chew toy, or a treat, dogs come up with an idea of what they’ll find at the end of a scent trail—and they’re totally surprised if what they find isn’t what they expected.

They understand a lot of words.

Dogs might not be able to answer back, but they can understand what you say. The average dog can pick up about 165 words, while the top 20 percent of super-smart dogs can understand up to 250 words. A big part of what we know about dogs’ language skills comes from a study on a border collie who recognized 200 spoken words and showed “fast-track learning”—a skill scientists once thought was only found in humans and language-learning apes.

They might be smarter than cats.

The total number of neurons an animal has, especially in the cerebral cortex, shapes their mental state’s depth and ability to predict what might happen around them based on past experiences. Dogs actually have way more neurons in their cerebral cortex than cats do—530 million compared to 250 million. This means that dogs have the biological capability to do much more complex and flexible things with their lives than cats can.

They use their faces to talk.

Dogs might get thrilled over a tasty treat, but they’re way more expressive when humans are watching them. Dogs are tuned into human attention and actually show more expressions when someone’s looking. Their facial expressions depend on whether they have an audience, not just on their excitement. The classic “puppy dog eyes” or brow raise is the most common expression.

They get our gestures.

Dogs don’t just process vocabulary and intonation—they also pick up on our gestures. We take for granted that dogs can easily follow our pointing to find a hidden toy or treat, but no other species can read our communicative gestures as naturally and flexibly as dogs can. This skill helps them solve problems and makes them perfect social partners for us.

They can tell if you’re happy or mad.

Dogs can tell when you’re mad at them for chewing your slippers, even before you start yelling. They can recognize angry and happy expressions in humans, understanding that these two faces mean different things. And they can do this not just with familiar faces, but even with ones they’ve never seen before.

They pick up on words and tone like us.

They might not talk, but dogs can understand speech in a way that’s pretty similar to how humans do. They use the left side of their brain to process words and the right side to understand intonation. This was discovered using fMRI to track dogs’ brain activity while their trainers praised them in positive and neutral tones.

They can’t help but yawn when you do.

Contagious yawning—when seeing, hearing, or even thinking about someone, yawning makes you yawn, too—is linked to empathy in human adults. Dogs also yawn contagiously, which means they have empathy as well. In fact, they might have more empathy than human infants, who don’t usually yawn contagiously. So now you know why your dog yawns so much.

They’re super empathetic.

Humans create feelings of empathy by quickly mimicking each other, and dogs do the same with their own involuntary, split-second copycat moves. Researchers observed dogs in a park and found that when one dog copied another’s play behaviors—like bowing or grinning—the play sessions lasted longer than when there was no mimicry. They also noticed that dogs who already knew each other were more likely to mimic each other than dogs meeting for the first time.

They can actually somewhat laugh.

Animal expert Patricia Simonet at Sierra Nevada College near Lake Tahoe studied dog laughter by analyzing recorded sounds of dogs playing at a dog park. To an untrained ear, she explains, “it sounds a lot like a pant, ‘huh, huh.'” Simonet also discovered that the sound of laughing dogs positively affects other pups around them.

They learn from their mistakes.

A simple example is when a dog gets attacked by another dog and then becomes afraid of all dogs. This happens because they’ve experienced trauma and connected it to the cause. Their memory tells them it was a pup that attacked and caused pain, so their logic tells them to stay away from dogs to avoid it happening again. Fortunately, just like humans, dogs can learn to overcome their fears. 

They can literally save your life.

Instinctive intelligence is a dog’s capability to do a job or task for humans. Service dogs are a great example of this and can often outdo machines that are meant to do the same thing. For instance, a dog’s sense of smell is about 40 times stronger than ours, allowing them to detect chemical changes in our bodies and alert us when our blood sugar drops or we’re about to have a seizure.

They can sense bad weather coming.

While dogs definitely don’t have a sixth sense for bad weather, their senses do pick up on climate changes before most humans notice. Before a storm, dogs can sense a drop in barometric pressure, feel a static electric field shift, smell chemicals in the air linked to lightning, and even hear thunder from far away.