I love my two yellow labs, Cisco and Holly. I shamelessly admit that they are two of my best friends. Now as empty nesters, my parents treat them like their children. It is not uncommon to find my dad sitting on the couch talking to them. This always makes me wonder: Can dogs understand humans? Although I know logically this would not make sense, my heart had me pursue this question. It turns out I am not the only one who has wondered about this.

(My puppies)

Scientists have proven that dogs worry about the emotion in our voices. They can tell if we sound happy or sad, the tone of our voice, and the different rhythms throughout our speech. A study conducted by scientists at Eotvos University in Budapest concluded that dogs react to human voices just like we do. The vocal region of their brain operates closely to the temporal lobe of our brains. To discover this, they put eleven dogs and twenty-two humans in an MRI machine. After playing 200 different noises, they measured the location and response characteristics of electrical impulses. It proved that the location in the dog’s brain related closely to the same area in the human’s brain. Dr. Attala Andics, the lead author of the study, concluded, “we know very well that dogs are very good at tuning into the feelings of their owners”. The study does not know why this is happening and it also points out that dogs respond much stronger to other dog noises. Also, while they do recognize human voices, they can’t recognize them as well as humans. This makes it seem unlikely that dogs could actually understand human conversations. However, other scientists are delving into this topic.

Andics explains, “We know quite a bit about how much dogs get about how we say things, but we know quite little about how much dogs get about what we say to them”. To find out more about how much dogs understand what we say, Victoria Ratcliffe, a graduate student from the University of Sussex, created an experiment. She gathered 250 dogs in a lab and put a speaker on both sides of the dog’s head. She played “to come” in both speakers and manipulated the words and tone of the voice each time. Ratcliffe then measured which way the dog reacted to the noise. When the dogs heard a meaningful command, 80% turned their head to the right. When more emotional commands were given, most dogs turned their head to the left. While this might seem meaningless, it shows that dogs can tell the difference between important and non-important sound sequences. Although it might seem backwards, it also shows that dogs most likely process emotional cues on the right and meaning of words on the left. Yet, most dogs cannot process this deeply enough to understand conversation like humans. Of course, there is always an anecdote.

(This shows and explains dogs in MRI machines)

John Pilley, a retired Wofford College psychology professor, taught his border collie, Chaser, over one thousand words. She has a thousand of her toys that she can identify. Chaser can also identify proper nous, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions. Pilley, also Chaser’s owner, is now excited that she can start to understand the difference of words in sentences. However, this did not come easily. Chaser and Pilley worked together for a minimum of five hours a day for three years. While border collies are a smart breed in general, Chaser has gone far above what any other dog has learned in the past.

So what does this mean? As of right now, dogs cannot understand a human talking to them. However, this doesn’t mean don’t turn towards them when your life is rough. On a less sophisticated level than humans, dogs can still understand your tone of voice and figure out your emotions. You are not imagining that your dog seems to pay more attention to you when you feel sad. Scientists are working hard to understand the rest of a dog’s brain to see if down the road teaching dog’s to understand us is a possibility. Some dogs, like Chaser, seem to show that this is a possibility. However, she is the product of countless hours of work every day and she can still not understand a normal conversation. For all dog owners around the word, I hope one day our furry friends can understand us.