Dogs know whether you’re switching languages ​​or talking meaninglessly

We already knew that dogs are good at learning words, but now it turns out that they are also very good when you speak another language or use meaningless words.

Dogs aren’t the only animals that can make chocolate out of the sound patterns in human speech, but they are exceptionally good at it. This is not new, we have known for some time that they can learn a fair number of words, but now it seems that – even if they are not called “ball” or “lie” – they pay close attention to the language they use. hear itself.

The idea for this research came from step. Two language-processing researchers left Mexico for Hungary and wondered if their dogs — already trained to lie in an fMRI machine — noticed that a different language was suddenly being spoken around them.

They added a number of family dogs to the test group who knew either Hungarian or Spanish as their language and showed the dogs excerpts from The Little Prince’s story. They saw a marked difference in brain activity when hearing unfamiliar language. They also saw the difference when they replaced the familiar language with a language of non-existent words.

Read more: Dogs can distinguish speech from leprechaun – and tell Spanish from Hungarian.