Chaser is a Border Collie with a special knack for remembering things. Her trainer and owner, John Pilley, raised her with the ability to remember the names of all her toys. Now she has over 1000 of them, can remember each by name, and can even find a new toy she doesn’t know in a stack of those she does.
Border Collies are by nature herding dogs. They were bred for the Scottish Highlands, but there’s one who herds toys instead of sheep. Her name is Chaser, and she has the unusual ability to remember the names of her toys — all 1000 of them. Trained by her owner John Pilley, Chaser loves to fetch toys from her pile, and she does so by remembering every toy’s name.
In order to test her amazing memory, NOVA host Neil Degrass Tyson brought Chaser a new toy and put it in a group of toys she already knew. Then he asked for the new toy by its name “Darwin.” Amazingly, Chaser was able to infer that since she knew the names of all the other toys, this new toy must be Darwin, and brought it to Neil successfully.
