A study has shown that dogs have a certain talent for languages that had only been associated with people before. Their skills for the recognition of human speech are far more complex than we have been aware of so far.
The researchers claim that dogs and humans share what they call “language talent”. The results of their study prove that dogs can not only recognize words but also different people’s voices. The study was carried out by scientists from the University of Sussex and published in Biology Letters.
The aim of the research was to find out if dogs can instinctively recognize the same word said by different people. More specifically, if they can recognize the same phonemes said by different people, no matter their accent and pronunciation.
For the sake of the study to be objective, the studied dogs didn’t know any of the people – the speakers. This prevented them from having an undesired reaction to a familiar person which might distort the results. Neither were the dogs motivated by treats or attention for the same reason.
They were recorded when reacting to the recordings of men’s and women’s voices saying words with similar sounds (e.g. had, hid, heard, heed). The words used for the study were carefully picked so they would not be related in any way to the typical commands. Therefore, the dogs couldn’t have any reaction to them because of their training.
According to the study, the dogs were able to recognize the same word said by different speakers as well as the speakers themselves on the basis of the sound of their voices. Until then, the ability to recognize vowel sounds said by different people had been considered to be an ability only humans have. It is crucial for the ability to speak. Without this, we wouldn’t be able to recognize the same word said by different people.
The research has shown that despite previous assumptions, this spontaneous ability is not exclusive to humans. Therefore, dogs share a kind of “language talent” with us which implies that the speech perception might not be a special thing only humans can do as we used to think.
We may not feel so weird when speaking to our dog companion as an equal speaker at home after this. The dog might understand us better than we could ever imagine. However, we still don’t have to pay attention to what we tell them – as of now at least. :)
If your cat is going to pee or defecate outside its toilette, it is only seldom just an issue of training or hygiene. Cats are clever animals and they have no trouble to understand, where to go to toilette. Therefore, if they don’t abide the rules of...
We hear about the war in Syria almost every day. But have you ever thought about how does a war affect local animals and that the self-sacrifice must not always be made by an animal for humans, but it can also be the other way around? The person that...
Acupuncture wants to harmonise the body and the mind. Some of you may have tried it, it was a great help to me personally with issues with my back and breathing. Precisely owing to my positive personal experience, the possibility to indulge dogs and...
In the life of any dog, a situation might come up, when it is necessary to put on a muzzle. And if the dog is not used to wearing it, it might mean a stressful situation. I will advise you on how to avoid stress and how to get your dog used to wearing...
Same as in people, also our pets should go to regular check-ups to a doctor. We might neglect this quite often, but it is still something else in animals. A dog or a cat won’t come up to you to tell you, that they’re not feeling well. That’s why an...
You probably have someone among your friends, who has diabetes. However, do you know, that cats and dogs also suffer from this disease quite often?
The name distemper might be familiar to you, but do you know more precise characteristics of this treacherous viral disease? Let’s take it one by one from the historic roots up to the present day
Do you know, what dreams our pets have? Besides myself, also a number of scientists were interested in this question and they came up with various hypotheses. Would you guess what our four-legged friends dream about?
Maybe even you have a small four-legged stressed-out dog at home. In such case, read carefully, maybe you will find something here, what you haven’t tried yet, while trying to get your pet rid of stress.
You have probably encountered the opinion, that much more important than what you’re saying to your dog is how you’re saying it (the tone). But it shows, that dogs are able to understand the human language much better, than we generally credit them for.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.3px 'Times New Roman'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} All of us surely likes to take pictures of our pets. However, the photographs don’t always turn out according to our...
It could seem that the smaller the animal, the less care it would require. However, don’t let yourself be fooled. Even if you have a small mouse at home, a rabbit or maybe a guinea pig, you should adapt the care for them to the season and to situations...
