Chaser, the Border Collie ‘knows more than 1,000 words’

A border collie in the US has learned the names of more than 1,000 items, according to the scientists working with her.

Chaser has been intensively trained over three years by psychologists Alliston Reid and John Pilley of Wofford College in South Carolina, who wrote up their findings in the journal Behavioural Processes.

As well as seeming to know the names of all of her 1,022 toys, her trainers say she can categorise them by function or shape, something human children learn to do when they are about 3yrs old.