Researchers from the University of Exeter and Canterbury Christ Church University explored the biases toward dogs in research, and found that dogs—when compared to other, relatively intelligent species like wolves, cats, hyenas, chimpanzees and dolphins—aren’t particularly exceptional in their cognitive abilities.

“During our work it seemed to us that many studies in dog cognition research set out to ‘prove’ how clever dogs are,” Stephen Lea, a professor at the University of Exeter and the study’s lead author, said in a press release. “They are often compared to chimpanzees and whenever dogs ‘win,’ this gets added to their reputation as something exceptional. Yet in each and every case we found other valid comparison species that do at least as well as dogs do in those tasks.”