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Some dogs are exceptional. Take Chaser for example, an American border collie (边境牧羊犬) regarded as the “smartest dog in the world”, who could recognize and remember 1, 022 nouns — one for each of her toys. In Germany, another border collie, a male named Rico, practiced “fast-mapping”, or figuring out the names of new things with the speed and cleverness of a three-year-old child.

Yet such examples of dog genius are often “about only one dog”, says Claudia Fugazza, an ethologist who studies dog cognition (认知) at Budapest’s Eotvos Lorand University. She and her colleagues asked owners of 34 pet dogs of various breeds (品种) to teach their dogs names for two separate toys. Out of those 34 animals, only one dog passed the test — a border collie named Oliva. “These results mean talent must be something special,” says Fugazza, lead author of a new study on the experiment.

The scientists looked for dog owners worldwide via social media, then asked them to play fetch with their dogs daily in their homes while repeating the name of the toy, a process that lasted three months. Once a month, with a scientist present, the owners tested the dogs—the study participants included both adults and little dogs — by asking the dogs to fetch one of two toys by name. Dogs that succeeded were then given a new toy and new name to learn. Despite the intensive training, only Oliva learned to match a single word to a toy — in fact, she learned 21 names in two months.

“None of the breeds learned a thing. It was such a surprise,” Fugazza says. To check if the study design worked, the scientists also tested six border collies that could already fetch some toys by name; as predicted, all six of those control dogs, including a dog named Nina, learned additional names.

It’s interesting that 18 of the 33 dogs that failed the test were also border collies, Fugazza points out, showing that the breed isn’t always high performing.

Because of such individual difference, the scientists next plan to track the genetics(基因) and history of a variety of dog breeds to try to identify the factors that produce such smart creatures.