Originally published at: New study suggests "gifted" dogs tilt their heads more frequently | Boing Boing
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This matches my experience as a dog sitter. Head tilts seem most common for smarter dogs, smarter breeds, and younger dogs for whom more of what they encounter is new.
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Wait a minute, my dog was given to me as a gift, and it never tilts its head. 
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Yeah, my pup does that, but still eats cat poo. The jury is still out…
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Maybe cat poo is delicious and your dog knows more than you do?
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Toxoplasmosis has evolved it to be yummy.
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One of the many fascinating things to learn in Mary Roach’s Gulp is that we know how to make cat and dog food that smells and tastes absolutely delicious to these animals, but we don’t do it. Hint: the answer involves chemicals like “putrescine” and “cadaverine”.
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“gifted word learner” …so they’re sloshing more blood flow into their Broca’s area?
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Matches my (very limited) experience. My dog is a scent hound, and most of his brain function is used for smelling things. He has no interest in retrieving, well, anything, really. He almost never tilts his head, and when he does, it’s at a new-to-him sound.
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I mean, there’s a much simpler explanation. They do it because we find it cute and we’ve bred (consciously and otherwise) dogs over tens of thousands of years to be cuter and cuter to us. They have all sorts of behaviours and characteristics that serve no physiological or evolutionary function. We just like them that way.
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Eating poo is an inherent behavior in female dogs (eliminate scents that might attract predatory aminals). Male dogs just do it for the taste, cause males are gross.
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This -
But these dogs shared something else in common: the head tilt.
Also this -
these talented pups—all border collies
I’m not saying only border collies do this, just that they might wanna see if border collies do it, I don’t know, more?
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Yeah I was watching YouTubes of dogs getting in trouble and looking guilty and laughing merrily along and then I suddenly realized that obviously dogs that angered their owners and didn’t display this behavior were somehow less able to pass on their genes 
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That’s a valid theory, but if true that would suggest that head-tilting should be a more prevalent trait among the toy breeds developed as home companions/fashion accessories than among the working breeds developed as herders or hunters.
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They’re all just actors!
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Track goes two ways. Maybe we think it’s cute because the smart dogs are more useful?
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