As a longtime dog owner, I believe two things: Dogs truly are man’s best friend, and dogs understand humans. Like any dog enthusiast I walk my dog, play with my dog, talk to my dog; and my intuition tells me he definitely understands what I’m saying. But seeing as our intuition is lousy, I decided to dive deeper into the matter.
I started my research on whether or not dogs understand humans on Animal Planet. Animal Planet has reason to believe that dogs can in fact understand humans… somewhat. “It turns out that people who talk to their dogs may be on to something. Studies show that the average dog can understand about 165 different words, in some cases more if you make a point of training them. This includes the basic commands such as “sit,” “stay,” and “go,” as well as a range of other terms, assuming they’re tangible words and not abstract ideas.” They continue to elaborate on how words are not the only part that play a role in canine communication; it also includes the physical activity and daily routines owners share with their pups.
A Live Science Article, “ Do Dog’s Understand Words or Emotion?” brings into question whether dogs are responding to words, or simply reading emotion. A study cited in the article concluded that dogs can read human communication cues. “Researchers used eye-tracking technology to study how dogs observed a person looking at pots after giving the dogs communicative cues, such as eye contact and directed speech. They found that the dogs’ tendency to follow the person’s gaze was on par with that of 6-month-old infants. The study suggests that dogs have evolved to be especially attuned to human communicative signals, and early humans may have selected them for domestication particularly for this reason, the researchers said.” I was extremely intrigued by the use of eye tracking technology to read communicative signals. It was not an idea that had crossed my mind, but after further reviewing it I thought about my person experience with dogs and how I usually associate their perception of what I’m saying and my emotion through their eyes.
Upon continuing my research, I found a lot of Information of a dog, Rico, famous for knowing 200 words. Researches put Rico to the test in an experiment intended to verify Rico’s understanding in a controlled environment. “To do this, they [researchers] collected 10 items with which Rico was familiar. At the verbal command of his owner, they had him fetch a specific item from a separate room. Rico performed very well at this task, but the researchers wanted to challenge him further. Next, they chose a new item — one that Rico had never seen in his life — and placed it in the room among the familiar items. The owner requested that new item by name and, lo and behold, Rico brought back the new item.” They tested this several times continually adding new items and discovered that Rico returned with the correct 70% of the time. This completely opposes the Live Science study’s use of eye tracking because Rico is set into another room and therefor cannot track through optics. This experiment speaks volumes towards canine-human communication because Rico’s ability to retain the information taught by his owner demonstrates canines understanding of spoken word.
All the information I attained gave me a better insight into a dog’s understanding of humans. Interspecies Communication is a scientific phenomenon that continues to interest researchers everywhere. Human-canine communication ability only brushes the surface of what the full topic has to offer.
All in all, I am glad to have learned that my dog really does understand me and it is not just me being blinded by love for my incredible dog, and I hope that as both species continue to coexist the levels of understand will only grow stronger.
I love that you chose to cover this topic because, as a dog owner myself, I would love to have scientific evidence that supports my theory that my dog understands what I’m saying! I wanted to dig a bit deeper because I wanted to know if dogs are innately able to understand humans, or if this is an ability of dogs who spend a lot of time around humans. Intuition would lead us to believe that dogs who are older, and have spent more time around humans, would be able to understand humans better than younger dogs who have not had much exposure to humans. But as we learned in class, our intuition is lousy, so I decided to investigate this. This study did a cross-sectional examination to evaluate the hypothesis that dogs acquire the ability to understand humans over time through repeated exposure to humans. What researchers found is that different age groups of dogs in the study “did not differ in their ability to use a human pointing or gaze cue; even puppies as young as nine weeks old were nearly perfect in the basic tests.” In addition, when comparing puppies with little previous exposure to humans to puppies who were in an obedience class (and thus had more exposure to humans), it was found that “both groups were equally skilled at using the cues.” The results of this study support the null hypothesis, which is that a dog’s level of exposure to humans has no effect on the dog’s ability to understand humans. This evidence is consistent with the thought that dogs have innate abilities to understand humans, which I find to be a very interesting and comforting thought!
I really found this article interesting because I too had a dog and he would understand me more than just the basic “come” or “stay”. When I would put my shoes on, he would understand that I was leaving so sometimes he would whine because he doesn’t want me to leave. I also learned some of his mannerisms like when I would scratch him behind his ears he would moan and I knew that he liked when I scratched him there. It really is interesting to think how much dogs understand, like what if they can sense your emotions? Dogs are so interesting, and I loved reading about them in this article!