Dogs are wonderfully intelligent creatures that have helped humanity get to where it is today. It is a proven fact that dogs and humans evolved together in a way that would be impossible if our two species had never bonded the way we did.
Well the results differ depending on where you are, but in Moscow, according to scientists, the dogs have gotten smarter.
Ever since Russia’s commercial revolution after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow’s stray dogs found that their normal food supply in the form of dumpsters and trash bins disappeared, and so needed to find new ways to feed.
One of these new ways to feed took form in what Moscow scientists have called “the hunt for shawarma”.
Imagine this: a man is in a hurry to get to work and so stops at a shawarma hut for a bite on the go. As he is busily walking and eating his meal at the same time, he suddenly hears a loud bark behind him that causes him to startle and drop his food, food which the dog behind him that just barked jumps forward and grabs before running off.
This might be considered an isolated incident if not just ten minutes later at the same location, another person with food is barked at by another dog and drops their food, too.
“This method of ambushing people from their back is widely exercised by Moscow dogs”, said A. Poiarkov, working in Ecology and Evolution Institute of Moscow. “The main point here is to define who would drop the food scared and who won’t, but the dogs are great psychologists [and] they can do it better than us.”
If you didn’t think that was enough to classify Moscow dogs as the smartest of all dogs, than look no further than their ability to ride the Moscow Metro. Yes, that’s right, stray dogs in Moscow have actually worked out how to ride the Metro from their homes in the outskirts of Moscow to the food-rich city center.
“They do it for fun, just [so] they have enough food.”