A clever border collie that can fetch at least 200 objects by name may be living proof that dogs truly understand human language, German scientists reported on Thursday.

The dog, named Rico, can fetch a newly introduced object when asked, even if he has never heard the name of the object before, the researchers say.

The findings, reported in the journal Science, may not surprise many dog owners. But they are certain to re-ignite a debate over what language is and whether it is unique to humans.

"We wonder what prevents animals from speaking. The limitations are not their capacity to hear or understand," Julia Fischer of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig told a news conference in Berlin.

Rico's abilities seem to follow a process called fast mapping, seen when young children start to learn to speak and understand language, they report.

Fast-mapping allows children to form quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word the first time they hear or see it.

The 10-year-old dog, which beat human competitors to win a popular German TV talent show five years ago, lives as a pet with his owners Witold Krzeslowski and Susanne Baus of Dortmund, western Germany.

Baus told the Berlin news conference that Rico developed his skills while laid low for nearly a year after a shoulder operation, as she tried to engage his mind and let his body rest.

"I discovered this talent and told my husband, who thought I was mad. At the start it was three to four objects, but it's risen to 200 or 250," she said. "I don't know what the limit might be, but we've now run out of space."

In their report, Fischer and colleagues wrote, "He was reported by (the owners) to know the labels of more than 200 items, mostly children's toys and balls, which he correctly retrieved upon request,"

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When they say "Rico, wo ist die (where is the) Banane (banana)," or "BigMac" or "Panda," the dog searches, often out of their sight, until he finds the object.

Fischer and colleagues set up experiments to test the dog, and are satisfied that he understands the words.

"Rico's vocabulary size is comparable to that of language-trained apes, dolphins, sea lions and parrots."

When they put a new object into a room filled with old objects, Rico was able to fetch it 7 out of 10 times, evidently figuring out that the new word he was given must refer to the new object.

Four weeks later, he apparently remembered this new word about half the time. "This retrieval rate is comparable to the performance of 3-year-old toddlers," the researchers wrote.

"Undoubtedly, he is a highly motivated dog," they noted, adding that border collies are bred to respond to human commands.

Obviously, they said, children have a deeper and broader understanding of words. But it could be that some of the mechanisms underlying language evolved in several species "before early humans were ready to talk."

Psychologist Paul Bloom of Yale University in Connecticut, an expert in how people learn the meaning of words, said not even chimpanzees have demonstrated such "fast-mapping" abilities.

"Perhaps Rico is doing precisely what a child does, just not as well," Bloom wrote in a commentary. "Rico's limitations might reflect differences in degree, not in kind."

But Bloom also noted that a child's understanding of language can include abstract concepts.

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