Dogs Can Recognize Toys By Function, Not Just Looks, Study Finds

Dogs aren't just man's best friend-they may also be sharper thinkers than we give them credit for. A new study shows that some“gifted” dogs can group toys not only by how they look, but also by how they're used.

In experiments published in Current Biology, researchers found that these dogs could link toys to functional labels like“fetch” and“pull”-even when they had never seen the toys before. This ability suggests that dogs form mental concepts of objects, a skill once thought to be uniquely human.

Dogs Think Beyond Appearances

For humans, it's second nature to recognize that a fork and a spoon belong together because they serve the same purpose, even if they don't look alike. Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest wanted to see if dogs could do something similar.

The team worked with so-called Gifted Word Learner (GWL) dogs-animals that already knew the names of many toys. Over the course of playful at-home sessions, owners introduced their dogs to two groups of toys: those used for tugging (“pull”) and those used for fetching. Importantly, the toys within each group looked different from each other, forcing the dogs to rely on function rather than shape.

Play, Learn, Remember

After just a week of natural playtime-without any formal training-the dogs were tested with brand-new toys. Remarkably, they extended what they had learned, grouping the unfamiliar toys into“fetch” or“pull” categories based on how they played with them. Later, when owners asked for a specific toy by its functional label, the dogs picked correctly-even though they had never heard that toy's name before.

“It's like calling both a hammer and a rock by the same name because they can do the same job,” explained Claudia Fugazza, the study's senior author.“Our dogs showed they can do the same thing with their toys.”

What It Means for Canine Minds

The findings reveal that dogs don't just memorize object names-they also attach meaning to them. By recognizing toys by function instead of just appearance, the dogs demonstrated a richer, more flexible understanding of words than previously believed.

Researchers say this sheds light on how basic language-like abilities may have evolved, and how they connect to memory and cognition. More studies are needed to test whether ordinary dogs (not just word-learning specialists) can classify objects by function too.

“We've shown that dogs learn object labels quickly and remember them for a long time,” said Fugazza.“The way they extend labels beyond looks to functions shows just how broad these concepts might be for them.”

This research was supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' National Brain Research Program (NAP 3.0), the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, and TRIXIE.

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