Your Dog Might Be Eavesdropping On You To Learn Language

Great news for people who like to think of their dogs as their children: a new study suggests that dogs may indeed be similar to an 18-month-old child in one fascinating way. 

The study, published in the academic journal Science, found that a certain group of “gifted” dogs can pick up on words relevant to them, just like a young toddler would.

The research suggests that dogs have the neurological capacity to eavesdrop and learn new words when they hear humans talking about something that interests them. (In the case of the study, dog toys.) 

“We demonstrated that a small group of Gifted Word Learner dogs, which possess an extensive vocabulary of object labels, can learn new labels by overhearing their owners’ interactions,” the study’s authors wrote. 

Such “gifted” pups can learn the name of a new toy even when it is hidden in a bucket, as long as their owner is looking toward the spot where it is. 

So it’s not just “fetch” and “good boy” your dog is responding to, said Shany Dror, the study’s lead author and a cognitive scientist at Eötvös Loránd University and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.

“We already know that all dogs are basically able to learn action labels: things like ‘sit down,’ ‘stay’ but it seems like there’s only a small group of dogs that are able to learn object labels, with things like ‘ball,’ ‘rope,’ ‘ring’ or ‘toy,’” Dror told HuffPost. 

When it comes to these dogs – aka Gifted Word Learner dogs – they’re not only able to learn, their learning is on a par with, or even better than, a toddler: one dog in the study, a 7-year-old female border collie named Basket, knew the names of over 200 dog toys.

“In some of our previous studies, we found that they can learn the a name of a new object after hearing it only four times, we see that they can learn at least 12 new toys in a single week,” Dror said. “They remember these toys for two years, they form categories of toys, so they’re really exceptional in their ability to learn.”

Dror was partly inspired to conduct the study because she’s heard so many anecdotes from dog owners who’ve noticed how engaged their dogs seem to be when they’re talking: dogs whose ears perk up when their owners are discussing ordering a pizza because they have a stuffed animal toy that’s a pizza slice, for instance. 

“One owner told me that she was talking with her husband on the phone about  a bag, and then the dog showed up with a toy named ‘bag,‘” Dror said. “So I was really wondering, to what extent are these dogs really paying attention to their owners’ conversations, and what might they be picking up from the owners?”

Turns out, a lot, at least for those Gifted Word Learners. 

That said, the study found that Gifted Word Learner dogs are “extremely rare” and “their remarkable abilities likely reflect a combination of individual predispositions and unique life experiences”.

“These dogs provide an exceptional model for exploring some of the cognitive abilities that enabled humans to develop language,” Dror said. “But we do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way – far from it.”

If you think your dog is particularly gifted – knowing the names of at least five objects – Dror said she’d love to hear from you.

Are certain dog breeds more likely to be Gifted Word Learners?

While a wide range of dogs can be gifted in this way – it’s not necessarily breed-specific – Dror said there was one breed of dog that’s overrepresented in these kinds of intelligence studies: border collies. 

Originally bred to herd sheep, border collies are often regarded as the smartest dog breed by most dog experts and trainers.

One border collie named Chaser was widely recognised as the world’s most intelligent dog. Before her death from natural causes in 2019, Chaser knew the names of more than 1,000 objects and had the largest tested memory of any non-human animal.

Beverly Ulbrich, a dog trainer and behaviourist in San Francisco, thinks that more dogs could be like Chaser if their humans spent more time interacting with them. 

“Whether it’s the word for an object, a command, or any other concept, dogs mostly learn from guessing,” she said. “They observe us as they try to figure out how to get what they want. They try to figure out how to communicate with us because we don’t teach them how to communicate.” 

Ulbrich hasn’t conducted a formal study, but she’s gathered from her two decades of dog training that dogs who are regularly spoken to can even distinguish between objects and nouns versus verbs.

“Dog breeds that are natural retrievers will have a better idea of nouns since they have to go fetch specific objects,” she said. “But dogs who do ‘tricks’ (listen to commands, dance, obedience) will more easily learn verbs and actions over nouns.” 

Schnauzers, for instance, seem to be “very verb-oriented” and struggle with nouns, she said. 

“Everything I’ve seen points to dogs being able to understand at more than a toddler level: they can understand complete sentences and even figure out your intention when you’re describing something new,” Ulbrich said. “The issue isn’t in dogs’ ability to comprehend or learn, the issue is in people’s inability to empathise, comprehend and teach.”