Dogs can understand toys without training

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September 24, 2025
3 min read

Dogs can understand toys without training

In a study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, a team of animal behaviour experts have shown that dogs can categorise objects by function and distinguish between toys for tugging and those for fetching. This was even the case when a toy did not demonstrate any obvious physical similarities. What’s more, the dogs were even able to remember the categorisations for long periods without training.

The studies took place with their owners in their home. At the start, they spent time getting familiar with verbal labels for two groups of objects, pull and fetch. The owners used these terms for specific toys and played with them accordingly, even if they didn’t share any similar physical features. The dogs were then tested to see if they had learned to connect the functional label to the correct group of toys, playing with more novel ones in the two categories.

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This time however, the owners did not use the terms for the toys. The team discovered that the dogs were still able to extend the labels they had learned to new toys based on their experience. In the final test, they showed that they could successfully apply the labels to the toys, by pulling or fetching, even before their owner had named them.

The authors of the study say that this ability suggests that they create mental representations of objects based on experience. These give us some insight into the evolution of basic skills related to language, including memory, according to the researchers.

More research will be needed to better understand the capabilities of dogs in this area. They suggest that future studies could explore whether they can still have an ability to understand an object’s function without learning any labels.

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