Rico's remarkable "vocabulary" raises new questions about language learning in animals

A 9-year-old border collie who apparently understands a vocabulary of 200 words—most of them in German—has led scientists to conclude that the remarkable dog has language-learning ability comparable, in some ways, to a human toddler. Their findings raise anew the question of whether language is strictly a human trait.

Rico is hardly the first non-human animal to show skills at language comprehension; his vocabulary size is comparable to that of language-trained apes, dolphins, sea lions and parrots. But researchers writing in the 11 June 2004 issue of the journal Science say the German canine shows a process of learning called "fast-mapping" not seen to this extent in animals other than humans.

Like a young human child, Rico can quickly form rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word after a single exposure by inferring that the new word is connected to an object he is seeing for the first time. That suggests to scientists that the ability to understand sounds is not necessarily related to the ability to speak, and that some aspects of speech comprehension evolved earlier than, and independent from, human speech.

Rico's skill was the subject of a news conference in Berlin on 10 June 2004 organized by Science, AAAS and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Scientist Julia Fischer, along with her Science co-author and Rico's owners, brought the study to life for a room filled with journalists representing media outlets around the world.

And, of course, there was Rico. After an appearance on a German game show about three years ago that launched his science-and-show-biz career, followed by months of methodical scientific testing, Rico emerged from the news conference as an international star.

"Such fast, one-trial learning in dogs is remarkable," said Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for life sciences. "This ability suggests that the brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans, and may have formed the evolutionary basis of some of the advanced language abilities of humans."

In the early chapters of Rico's story, he appeared on the popular German game show "Wetten, das...?" Fischer heard about his amazing performance and arranged a meeting with Rico in September 2001. After Rico's caretakers agreed to the collaboration, Fischer's team at the Planck Institute set out to test the dog's word skills. In a series of controlled experiments, he correctly retrieved, by name, a total of 37 out of 40 items randomly chosen from his toy collection.

Next, the researchers tested Rico's ability to learn new words through fast-mapping. The German scientists placed a new toy among seven familiar toys. In a separate room, the owner asked Rico to fetch the new item, using a name the Border collie had never heard before.

Rico correctly retrieved the new item in seven of 10 such tests. He apparently uses a process of elimination, much as young children do, to surmise that new words tend to refer to objects that do not already have names. After a month without access to these target toys, Rico retrieved them, upon request, from groups of four familiar and four completely novel toys in three out of six sessions. His retrieval rate is comparable to the performance of three-year-old toddlers, according to the authors.

Toddlers would have loved the press conference. Rico's owners brought a wicker chest, two large boxes and four crates all filled with toys Rico knows by name.

During the photo shoot at the end of the press conference, journalists wielding still and video cameras crawled under tables to catch the photogenic pooch in action. As people threw toys and Rico scampered, the press conference spilled into a second room, the hallway and the building's atrium.

With toys spread everywhere, it looked like the end of an extravagant birthday party. The three different Santa Claus toys Rico played with, each with a unique name, added to the festive spirit.

After the last TV crew left once, returned to catch Rico's bark on tape and then departed again, Fischer looked to the future. Over lunch and espresso, she talked about her research and the ways it may remain in the collective memory of the global scientific community and beyond.

"The public will probably come away with the story, 'Smart dog learns like a child'," Fischer said. But, she added: "I don't want to become 'the whimsical dog lady'." Instead, she hopes that within the scientific community, Rico's popularity draws attention to questions regarding the evolution of language as well as her larger body of research.

"In some ways, science is storytelling," Fischer said. "Even within the scientific community, people relate to and remember stories. Storytelling plays a part in how we accumulate knowledge. Stories wrap information in something that people will remember."

Her team is now investigating Rico's ability to understand entire phrases, such as requests to put toys in boxes, or to bring them to certain people. It's a fair prediction the news media and the public will be keen to hear of the results.

How does Fischer feel about the media attention so far? "Overwhelming," she said, "[but] in a good way."

Video

Download a VIDEO in QuickTime format. 1.76 MB

The video clip shows the very first session of the identification task, in which a novel item is requested by using a novel name. Rico is first instructed to bring two familiar items; first the “tyrex” (the blue dinosaur), and next the “weihnachtsmann” (the little red doll). Subsequently, a novel word (“sirikid”) is used to ask for the novel item, the white bunny.

Video courtesy of Julia Fischer

See also the story about Rico in Science News for Kids on EurekAlert!

—Daniel B. Kane

10 June 2004