A November 2024 study published in the journal Animal Behavior and Cognition found that dogs can be trained to exhibit creative behavior when given the cue “create.”

The researchers demonstrated that, when taught to respond to a single verbal prompt, dogs performed actions that were new to them rather than repeating trained responses — a sign of behavioral flexibility that the authors say helps animals cope with unexpected challenges. Coverage of the paper is available via Kinship.

In the tests described by the study, dogs produced a range of previously unseen behaviors on cue. Those behaviors included lifting their paws, scooting backward, hopping on their back legs, shuffling their paws, barking, touching the trainer’s knee with their paw, stepping forward, and putting their head down.

The authors framed those actions as evidence that dogs can generate novel responses rather than simply selecting from a fixed set of practiced behaviors. The study noted that such creative innovation in dogs is comparable in certain respects to problem-solving shown by dolphins and porpoises, specifically in the context of the cue-elicited innovation task, rather than suggesting a general cognitive equivalence between the species.

Observers writing about the study have placed it alongside broader research into canine intelligence and problem-solving; further reading on related research is available at Phys.org and Newsweek. Those articles situate the new findings within ongoing efforts to map how curiosity, attention, and flexibility influence dogs’ learning.

The study’s central contribution is its demonstration that a single, specific cue can prompt animals to produce behaviors outside their existing repertoire, shifting the measurement of creativity from human-centric tasks to actions observable in everyday training. The authors argue that this approach reveals flexibility that could be ecologically relevant — the kind of adaptability animals use to manage novel problems.

By documenting a variety of spontaneous actions in response to the cue, the paper provides a behavioral catalogue that trainers and researchers can use to explore creativity experimentally. The list of observed responses—ranging from subtle paw movements to full-body postures—forms the empirical basis for the claim that dogs can be creatively innovative.

The study was published in Animal Behavior and Cognition in November 2024 and adds to a growing body of work examining cognitive traits across species. Its methods and findings offer a starting point for follow-up research into how widespread such cue-elicited creativity is among different breeds and in varied training contexts.

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Original reporting: view the original article.