Scientists recently examined hundreds of studies on dog intelligence and compared them to research into the minds of other smart animals. The researchers found that dogs are among the smarter carnivores, social hunters and domestic animals — but that they don’t stand out from other smart animals in any of those categories.

The dog’s relationship with humans began long ago. They are descendent of a species similar to wolves, and about 14,000 years ago, they began going into human camps for food, where they gradually became more and more comfortable around humans. The second part of the dog’s evolution happened around 2,000 years ago when humans saw how useful dogs could be and started breeding them.