Anyone who lives with a dog has the feeling that their pet understands their words. It is not an illusion caused by affection. Or not at all. Various investigations have shown in recent decades that these animals are the species that best understands human language. Not surprisingly, dogs have been with us for many thousands of years, and have evolved in close connection with people.
Now, new research has confirmed this canine ability, and has provided a surprising piece of information: if you want your puppy to listen to you and you want to educate him, you have to speak to him in a way very similar to what you would use to address babies.
“Come here, sweetie, puppy, pretty!”
We do not speak the same to dogs as we do to our fellow men. When addressing a dog, we generally use shorter, simpler words and phrases and a higher tone. It’s the same thing we do with very young children, and it has one goal: to make sure they understand us.
The research at hand, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveals that this type of tone becomes even higher when we address puppies, and that this is very effective in attracting their attention and training them. The effect is much smaller in adult specimens, suggesting that “human language for dogs” is especially important for very young animals, who need to learn to interact with people and decipher the meaning of some of their words and expressions. It’s the same thing a human baby has to do to survive.
The voices of affection
To find out how dogs reacted to human language , bioacoustics specialist Nicolas Mathevon and his colleagues at the University of Lyon in Saint Étienne, France, recorded the voices of 30 women looking at photos of animals of different ages while reading phrases like “¡¡ Hello, sweetie! Come here! Very good! Good boy! Come here, darling! “ They then recorded the same phrases while the participants viewed images of people. As expected, the tone of voice changed in the way described above.
They then played these recordings of ten puppies and ten adult dogs from a dog shelter in New York and filmed their reactions. Nine of the pups barked excitedly and ran to the speaker when they heard the recordings directed at dogs, and showed less interest in sounds intended for humans.
Interestingly, adult dogs exhibited the same reaction to all three types of recordings (directed at them –in a less high-pitched tone–, at pets or at people): they took a brief glance at the loudspeaker and immediately fell into indifference. Researchers ignore the cause of this phenomenon, but Mathevon believes that the high-pitched and exaggerated tones that puppies like so much have a clear utility: to capture the attention of puppies and train them in the knowledge of human emotions, which will be essential for them to cope successfully in the environments in which they will have to live.
