Dog fires handgun: Accident or intelligence?

The incident happened when two men were assaulting another man with a handgun at a supermarket in Chestermere, Alberta.

Police dog
Picture for representation Reuters

A police dog in Canada fired a handgun accidentally while officers were investigating a fight in a nearby shop.

The incident happened when two men were assaulting another man with a handgun at a supermarket in Chestermere, Alberta. Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were called to the scene to break up the fight. Accompanying them was the police dog, which had the job of tracking the already fled suspects.

The dog came across a gun in a bush near the supermarket and collected it as evidence. Officers said that one shot was accidentally fired by the dog, though it did not injure anyone.

"The trigger was activated and a shot was fired from the handgun," said a news release by the police. It also added that there were no other people in that area and nobody got hurt.

"That's one of the things that our dogs are trained to do, is find evidence," Corporal Curtis Peters, a communications officer for the RCMP, told CTV News.

Some remarkable animal intelligence examples

The dog's deed is remarkable and at par with other animal intelligence examples that have been observed. For instance, did you know that crows have a highly developed cognitive sense? Once they see you, they never forget your face.

Elephants have been known to imitate human speech, and cockatoos can easily pick locks.

Dogs understand arithmetic, something that humans are still struggling to do. Goldfish, on the other hand, can understand the difference between two music pieces.

Even tiny creatures like honeybees are intelligent enough to count, categorise, and comprehend objects: both symmetrical and asymmetrical.

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