Can dogs do maths?

Dogs have been very helpful and very close to human’s lives. In fact, dogs are able to do a wide variety of works for human, and can even remember words said by human (A man actually tried to make the dog remember the names of certain objects and has been able to order the dog to retrieve the item he needs for him, all he need to do is only name the thing, and the dog will go and get it for him.) Dogs also go through stages since they were born, like human. Their knowledge and perception of things are still very limited when they are born. But soon after, by observing other dogs, or even human’s, act, or through reinforcement by human, they will be able to do many things. Because of the result of this cognition of dogs’ act, Dr. Stanley Coren, an expert at dog psychology, said that the results could even exceed those who are closest in terms of genetics to us human. Dog can also do some simple art of deduction. Once, a dog stole a treat from human, and it actually hid it by sitting on it when the owner came.

Why, seeing all this examples, we may think like this; dogs might be able to do maths, might they not? Maths Includes analytical, problem solving, and concept understanding ability. Can dogs do that? Can dogs understand a topic when it is being told as they understand an order when they received it? Do they EVEN understand the orders being given to them? Or are they just mimicking the things happening around them? Dogs have a fairly good memory, we could be sure of that. But do they have an understanding? Do they understand that if they do this thing, that will happen? We are not sure yet. Why couldn’t we be sure of these kind of things? The borders of language. The thing that happens quite a number of time even between us human, and always the case with animals, including dog, the ‘man’s best friend’.

At the end, dogs might be able to do maths, but we wouldn’t know even if they do. Why? Because of the limitation called language. We human, have our own language that is far different from dogs, that some people don’t even bother to consider them having some kind of language to interact with one another. And that is why we could not be sure of all this. We are short of evidence, and would need some more observations, experiment, and data collecting to know that for sure.