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Belgian Malinois most intelligent dog breed in the world

People often think Border Collies are the smartest dogs because they’re great at herding. But scientists have found that Belgian Malinois

By Ground Report 07 Jan 2024

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Belgian Malinois most intelligent dog breed in the world

People often think Border Collies are the smartest dogs because they’re great at herding. But scientists have found that Belgian Malinois might actually be the smartest. They tested over 1,000 dogs from 13 breeds to find this out.

Belgian Malinois: Independent, responsive, understanding, and skilled

Belgian Malinois are great at sniffing, guarding, and police work. They’re also known for being independent, good at solving problems, and quick to respond. Plus, they’re good at understanding people.

Scientists at the University of Helsinki in Finland did a big study on how different dog breeds think. They tested over 1,000 dogs from 13 breeds on 10 tasks. Then, experts evaluated the dogs using a test called smartDOG.

Saara Junttila, who did the study, said that most breeds had their strengths and weaknesses. For example, Labrador Retrievers are good at understanding human gestures, but not so good at solving problems that involve space. Some breeds, like the Shetland Sheepdog, did about the same on all the tests.

But the Belgian Malinois did well on many of the tasks. Border Collies also did well on many of the tests.

The team thought the best test of a dog’s overall intelligence was a logical reasoning test. In this test, the dog was shown two bowls of food and could see that one was empty. The idea was to see if the dog could figure out that the food was in the other bowl, which was covered. But it turned out that all the breeds were about the same at solving this task.

Then the researchers used three tasks to test specific parts of how dogs think. These tasks showed how the breeds were different from each other.

Dog navigates V-fence for food

One task was a V-detour task, where the dog had to go around a clear V-shaped fence to get to food it could see. This partly tested the dog’s problem-solving ability.

Another task tested how well dogs could understand human gestures. The researchers looked at how the dogs responded to five different gestures: pointing constantly, pointing briefly, pointing with the foot, pointing at something while looking somewhere else, and following our gaze.

The researchers also investigated how independent a dogs are and how quickly they turn to a human for help. For this trait, an unsolvable task (trying to access food in a box that cannot be opened) was used.

"Understanding human gestures measures social cognition, so dogs that perform well in that task excel at reading and understanding humans," said Junttila.

“The unsolvable task also mediated a social aspect; Some breeds scored very high on human-directed behaviour, meaning they tried to ask the human for help with the difficult task, while at the other extreme, dogs tried to solve the problem independently. Both answers can be useful in different situations.”

The Malinois, champion

The data shows that the Belgian Malinois ranked first in both the human gestures and the V-turn task, and it was the fifth most independent breed. The Malinois achieved first place in the general intelligence score with 35 points out of a maximum of 39.

The border collies upheld their reputation, earning a worthy second place with 26 points, whereas the Hovawart secured the bronze medal with 25 points, one point more than the Spanish Water Dog.

The Golden Retriever and Labrador, known for their emotional intuition, achieved high scores on the gesture test but scored low on the other two, landing them in the 13th and 9th places, respectively.

But the team of researchers argues that knowing which races excel at certain skills more than others is more useful than classifying each specific trait and general intelligence.