Humans can communicate various instructions to dogs without using actual words—simply by modulating the tone of their voice, a new study from ELTE University’s Department of Ethology shows. By repeating the nonsense syllable ‘bü’ in different intonations, humans successfully signaled “Yes,” “No,” “Here,” and “There” and, remarkably, dogs responded correctly, despite receiving no prior training. The findings reveal ancient acoustic codes, interpretable across species, that predate language itself. The study was published in Cognition.
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I thought this was already quite obvious and widely known - I suppose there simply hadn’t yet been a formal study.
Yea, pretty confident that the current understanding in animal behavior and psychology, as it relates to dogs, is that they don’t comprehend words. It’s all just noise. You can cue a dog to perform a behavior with any noise, or easier yet, no noise and just a hand signal. Dogs respond better to hand signals than verbal ones, fun fact. When you’re instilling a new behavior, best practice is to add the verbal cue only after the dog has sufficiently learned the behavior
Now do cats!
Yea, not as well educated as far as cat training goes, but you can train any animal the same way, Pavlov’s classical conditioning. You can even train butterflies to fly between two points with the technique! Very cool
I trained my dog with fingersnaps. One snap was come to me. 2 snaps was follow me. One snap and a finger pointing to the ground was “sit down here” and he would sit wherever I’d point. Lost that dog almost 20 years ago, miss him like hell to this day. I can’t get another dog. There was something in his eyes that I simply can’t see in other dogs’ eyes.
It was — somebody just wanted an easy paper to publish.
And they get to play with dogs for work.
Obviously, they could have simply asked a bunch of dog owners but that’s considered anecdotal. Doing this in a controlled environment eliminates any bias from the owners.
Were these researchers under the impression that dogs actually understood English before the experiment?
I can tell my dog to “sit” in English and he (sometimes) does.
I can use the same exact tone that say “sit” in Spanish or Japanese and he absolutely doesn’t understand it one bit.
Yes, I believe dogs recognize vocal patterns above and beyond tone.
Your dog understands the sound you make and your associated intention when you say “sit” in English because that’s what they’ve been exposed to the most. Do it enough times in Spanish and Japanese and they’ll eventually figure those out, too. That doesn’t mean the dog understands how to say “sit” in three different languages, it means they understand you’ve got three different “sounds” that mean you want them to sit.
Is that not just understanding language though? I could say the exact same thing about myself.
No, because there’s no “understanding” of language going on here. The dogs are responding to a trained stimulus. I could train a dog to sit when told to stand and they wouldn’t be confused at all because it isn’t the word itself they’re interpreting and responding to.
ETA: Downvoters need to stop anthropomorphizing their animals. It’s not healthy for you or them.
I still would say the same could be said for people. If from birth I was told that stand means sit, and I was raised in that manner, my response to being told to stand would be to sit, language is overall a response to a trained stimulus. It’s a very complex and interwoven response to trained stimulus but I am not interpreting the word itself, I am responding to what I have been trained that the word means. When I learn a new word I don’t respond based on what it means without having it demonstrated or explained.
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That’s because the word sit in Japanese doesn’t sound remotely close to the word sit in English. But if you just kind of Simlish at him in the same kind of tone you’ll get a similar response.
The researchers were actually dogs so
yesnoyesThey even were in a lab coat
Most dogs can understand vernacular language. If an average 3-year-old would understand a majority of the words your dog probably does too.
My dog is scared of his own farts, he is definitely not as intelligent as a 3-year-old human. One time he refused to come in out of the rain because the door was already open and because he hadn’t seen me open it, it must be closed in his mind.
My cat, however, thinks his name is Food
Well yeah I would be kind of surprised if dogs understood language. My dog doesn’t understand the word walkies he just understands the tone. If I just go derrrrdi that’s close enough.
Wasn’t that already a known thing? I’ve.beem able yo do that with dogs since… well forever
if you have a shih tzu they don’t respond to jack shit except what they want
