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Animal Cognition : Understanding Cognitive Abilities Of The Domestic Dog

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Advances in Canine Cognition: Understanding Cognitive Abilities of the Domestic Dog
The present paper is dedicated to explain and describe the different advances and developments achieved in canine cognition. It seems to be growing interest in the cognitive abilities of the domestic dog; this interest is, certainly not new; many researchers have been studying canine cognition for quite some time and the knowledge about this area has increased. Dogs were domesticated approximately 10,000 years ago (Vila, C., Savolainen, P., Maldonado, J, E., Amorin, I., R., Rice, J., E., et al. (1997). In our current society dogs are considered unique; since they are the primary animals chosen to help us, humans, in so many different ways. Dogs have been raised and trained to help us hunt, herd our livestock, protect our homes, also, dogs have become an important addition to the armed forces, service animals and, of course, dogs are our companions.
Cognition can be generally defined as the mental processes that include perception, learning, memory, decision-making that allows an animal to take in information about the environment, process and retain the information, and make decisions on how to act. These mental processes are in general measured indirectly. Over the last decades several publications on canine cognition have produced a great amount of information on canine cognitive abilities. (Frank, 2002). The subject of canine cognition is very interesting topic this paper aims to expand
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