Animals purportedly possessing special abilities enabling them to solve math problems or answer questions on various subjects have historically been offered as public attractions. Their “special abilities” have been debunked as taking cues from their owners. The horse Clever Hans is a well known example of such an animal who lived around the turn of the century.
Around this same time, the owner of a fox terrier named Bob claimed the dog could read his mind and as such, was able to identify coins, wild animals and perform similar feats.
A two page article on Bob, including several photos of him performing tricks, was published in Animal life and the world of nature: a magazine of natural history throughout the world, Volume I, July 1902 – June 1903 . Read page one here and page two here.
Of course animals can read minds – every pet owner knows that :)
It does not actually matter whether animals like Clever Hans take their cues from their owners – that is a pretty great achievement by itself. Think about how attentive and sentient the horse had to be to learn to pick up on the owner’s signals and what they mean – especially if they were not consciously made.