New Study Discovers Dogs Understand Different Languages

Have you ever wondered what you sound like to your dog? While many of us might imagine we sound like a blabbing cartoon character to them, new research found a far more interesting answer.

Researchers in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, recruited 18 dogs and trained them to lie still in an MRI machine for a brain scan to find out what happens in canine brains when dogs hear a language they don't know.

The dogs used in the study were all adult dogs between the ages of 3 and 11 and included Border Collies, Golden Retrievers, Australian Shepherds, Cocker Spaniel, and mixed-breed dogs. Two dogs were familiar with Spanish, while the others were familiar with Hungarian.

While the dogs lay in the MRI machine, researchers played recordings from the classic children's book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Hungarian and Spanish. Sometimes the dogs heard a recording in Hungarian, sometimes in Spanish, and sometimes a computer-scrambled recording that no longer resembled human speech.

The researchers analyzed the MRI result and found that dogs could distinguish speech from non-speech. They could also tell the difference between a familiar and unfamiliar language.

The study's result is amazing as it shows dogs don't need any training to distinguish between languages. It also showed that our dogs are involved in our communication, whether we're talking to them directly or not.