Because while scientists have long pointed to the connection between the functioning of different dog breeds and their physical appearance, the intelligence of our four-legged friends could not be determined from their appearance until now.
But according to a Hungarian study maybe now you can.
A small study
The head shape of dogs varies from so-called brachycephalic breeds such as bulldogs to dolichocephalic breeds such as greyhounds. And a golden retriever is somewhere in between (mesocephalic).
To see if there was a relationship between muzzle shape and intelligence, the researchers compared 15 English and 15 French bulldogs with 13 Hungarian mudis – medium-sized sheepdogs.
During the study, the dogs performed a series of tasks that tested their problem-solving abilities, and the short-snouted bulldogs performed worse than the long-headed mudis.
And even if the bulldogs did complete the given task, they did it more slowly than the mudis.
“Despite the clear results, a study of such a modest size is still inconclusive,” writes the author, Stanley Coren, in Psychology Today.
A more comprehensive comparison
That is why Coren took another look at his own book Why Does My Dog Act That Way to analyze the underlying dataset, which includes extensive testing with results from as many as 133 dog breeds.
By ranking the varieties by head length and then looking at their performance, it was clear to Coren that something was wrong.
‘The varieties with a short snout performed significantly worse than the other two. This is not to say that I am reviving phrenology, but it is interesting.’
