NEW YORK — Dogs are great at learning action commands like “sit” and “stay.” They’re less good at remembering the names of things, like what their squeaky or stuffed toys are called. Only an elite group of gifted word-learner dogs can retain the names of hundreds of toys. Scientists know of about 50 such pooches, but they aren’t yet sure what’s behind their wordy skills. Now, new research is pushing the limits of what the dogs can do. Scientists already knew that these extraordinary pups could learn the names of their stuffed pizza and doughnut toys from playtime with their owners. In the latest study, they discovered that the pups can also understand new names by eavesdropping. Ten gifted dogs — including a Border collie named Basket and a Labrador named Augie — watched their owners hold a new toy and talk to another person about it. Then the pups were told to go to another room and retrieve that specific toy from a pile of many others. Seven out of the 10 dogs successfully learned the names of their new toy stingrays and armadillos from passively listening to their owner
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