• Question: Do dogs understand us when we speak

    Asked by SophieFarrell to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 8 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by mat.
    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      They don’t understand us in the way another human would but we can train them to associate certain words with a particular meaning. They are good at reading our faces and body language though to know how we feel and what they should do. A lot of the time we’re not understanding them as well as we should though

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      They don’t understand word for word what we say, no. But they learn the intonation we use when we give instructions. Humans and animals vocalise in quite similar ways, if we’re angry our voice becomes deeper and more threatening, if we’re stress or frightened our voice becomes louder and our pitch goes up. With animals it’s the same thing, so dogs can pick up on human emotions using the same “rules” that they themselves use to communicate with each other.

    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think (happy to be proven wrong by an exceptional dog though!) that most dogs do understand us when we speak. But what they do learn are sounds, our associated actions and the tone of our voice. For example when you train your dog to sit, you say the word, make an action and reward correct behaviour. Dogs are usually quite intelligent and they will learn to associate all that together – they listen for the end of the word. They also go on tone and our postures – so if you are balling at your dog and shaking your finger it will get the jist you are mad.

      Your dog probably won’t understand anything other than you are making noises at it if you sit and read it a book though 🙂

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Dogs can learn to recognise sounds. They often match a sound to an activity, like “walk” means “going outside”. But our words are just sounds to them. They don’t learn sentences or grammar. So they won’t be learning secrets by listening to your conversations – although they can pick up on our emotions from how we speak, shouting, angry or quiet and kind.

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      Great question! A recent research shows that it is more the tone and our facial expression that dog understand rather than our actual words. Dogs can understand the anger, happiness in our voices.

Comments