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Originally Posted by SirTeddykins  What I understood from your previous post was that Yorkie's brain size = the reason they are harder to train because their brains are "less effective" etc.
Please correct me if I'm wrong! If, however, my interpretation of your comments are correct, I would have to ask you to consider the suggestion that you are less intelligent than an elephant who has a brain considerably larger than your own (approx. 17lbs) or a blue whale.
If one considers the above, it may be possible to understand why attributing intelligence to brain size doesn't make sense. Having said that, I do understand why you have come to that conclusion i.e. more space = more room for synapses etc. In reality, it just doesn't work that way!
Hope that makes sense. It's very hard to put into a paragraph the hundreds of different things we know about the brain and the trillion other ones we don't! I'm afraid we may have spun the OP's post into a very technical tangent - many apologies! |
Again, I'd still like to read how science doesn't back up the causation I have attributed to my experiences.
And you know human brain intelligence is never reliably compared to that of animals, is usually based on the fact that we have more cortex and far more dedicated, developed structures within the brain than other mammals as some reasons why humans have more measurable intelligence than they do, though the other reasons are little understood yet by science. But size is never accurately a true comparison between the human and animal brains, though it is among other animals.
Still, the size of a tiny dog brain compared to a much larger dog's brain, when the cell size is basically the same in both dogs, has got to limit the amount dedicated to learning/retention ability in a small dog. Anyway, the consensus of most dog trainers who keep actual training records and measure the amount of times they must repeat a command B4 the dog can reliably repeat it every time, is that large dogs train more easily with fewer repetitions and get it right on first command to a far greater degree. With the small dogs, it's about one-third to twice as long to train a small dog with any basic new command and second, third commands are often necessary, though over-generalizing is never good to do with any dog, even Afghans.
There is one study that says larger dog have improved intraocular abilities due to likely greater inter-ocular distances over small dogs and that might be one reason they may learn what humans expect of them more easily and quickly in the exercise studied. And they followed it up by saying large dogs did better on the pointing exercise studied than small dogs.
Physical size matters in the domestic dog's (Canis lupus familiaris) ability to use human pointing cues
So the larger dog has bigger eyes, more developed structures within them that allow him to take in more information due to the physical difference in the length and size of the eyes. Could it be that his brain is also equally larger, more structurally developed and able to perform? It's not all that big a stretch. Note that the last line of that abstract says that researchers need to be careful when making comparisons between breeds to first consider
physical differences before assuming any inherent cognitive differences. I agree and don't think small dogs are actually stubborn, just don't have the same learning capacities or plain old physical abilities and often, aren't motivated enough by the trainer. But boy, once they get it, they are off and running!
But to all who train their toy dogs, keep your sessions short, frequent, fun, loving and really motivate your little one to want to do that next command.
https://apdt.com/pet-owners/choosing-a-trainer/myths/
I, too, am sorry, OP, for getting onto this tangent and to Misty, it was a good discussion!!! Sleep well tonight over there in the U.K., girl!!!