are several open questions regarding Rico's abilities that could serve to further illuminate the nature of canine intelligence: Can Rico demonstrate understanding of a word other than by fetching an object? Could Rico be told not to fetch a specific object (akin to telling a human child "don't touch!")? Can Rico learn a word for any object that is not small and fetchable? Can the same results be produced with nonlinguistic sounds? According to Julia Fischer, "[Rico's ability] tells us he can do simple logic . . . It's like he's saying to himself, 'I know the others have names, so this new word cannot refer to my familiar toys. It must refer to this new thing.' Or it goes the other way around, and he's thinking, 'I've never seen this one before, so this must be it.' He's actually thinking." Rico in popular culture Ukrainian indie-rock band Poupée F made a song called "Rico the Clever", which is based on this story. See also Betsy, a border collie known to understand over 340 words The border collie Chaser had a vocabulary of 1022 words, could reason by exclusion, and could recognise objects by the groups they belong to List of individual dogs Koko, a gorilla who learned sign language Alex, a grey parrot known for intelligent use of speech Dog intelligence Human-animal communication Animal cognition References External links Genome News Network article and photo CBC article Washington Post article and photo YouTube of The Wogans's video Rico the Clever from Mockumentary EP by Poupée F 1994 animal births Individual dogs Animal intelligence 2008 animal deaths