Dogs can tell the difference between human languages they are familiar with and those they are not

 

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Animals like this are the first to distinguish between human languages.

 

Studying how dogs' brains behave when exposed to multiple languages, researchers found that canines may have difficulty following commands from people in a new nation if their owners brought them along.

 

Dogs are the first known non-human animals to discern between familiar and unfamiliar languages, making them the only non-human animals to tell the difference between human languages.

 

Lead author Laura Cuaya, a neurobiologist at Hungary's Eötvös Loránd University who just relocated from Mexico with her dog Kun-Kun to Budapest, came up with the new study, which was published online Dec. 12, 2021, in the journal NeuroImage.

 

Kun-Kun was often contacted and chatted to by people in Budapest who were nice with dogs, according to Cuaya. To my astonishment, I pondered if Kun-Kun recognized that Budapest's inhabitants speak a different language.

 

A team of researchers led by Cuaya trained 18 dogs, including Kun-Kun, to lie immobile in an MRI machine so that researchers could examine their brains. To test the dogs' hearing abilities, the researchers played them three distinct recordings: a Spanish reading of "The Little Prince," a Hungarian reading of the same book, and a sequence of human noises that had nothing to do with speech. The canines had only been exposed to one of the two languages, so one was familiar to them while the other was not.

 

According to a press release from the researchers, brain scans showed that dogs could not only tell the difference between speech and non-speech, but they also responded differently to familiar and new languages.

 

Using the theory of "hierarchy processing," Cuaya added, researchers believe that dogs' primary and secondary auditory cortexes (located within the temporal cortex, which lies at around ear level in the skull) allow them to process speech in two phases. "The main auditory cortex detects whether a sound is a speech or not," she explained. This is where we can tell if the language we're hearing is one we've heard before or one we haven't."

 

A more recent study discovered that older dogs had higher activity levels in the part of the brain responsible for discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar sounds in the secondary auditory cortex (SAC). Because older dogs have been exposed to more languages, Cuaya believes that older dogs are better at distinguishing between them. As dogs age, they've had much more time to observe human conversation.

 

According to the study, dogs may not be the only animals that can discern the difference between dialects spoken by humans. Each language differs from the others due to a unique set of sounds and rhythms the human brain is adept at recognizing. "Many animals' brains should be able to recognize these patterns with some training."

 

While dogs can be educated to discriminate between human languages, they are unique because they don't need to be taught. Because of their domestication, Cuaya theorized, "their minds sensed the difference naturally." Though many creatures can tell the difference between human languages, dogs are one of the few that want to hear us talk.

 

According to a recent Live Science investigation, dogs can detect deception in human communication.

 

Despite being "surprised" by the study's findings, Cuaya believes that many people underestimate our canine companions' intelligence.

 

"My experience with dogs has showed me that they are continuously aware of their social world and everything that occurs around them," Cuaya added. The saying goes, "I believe dogs know us better than we realize."

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/dogs-differentiate-human-languages

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/illustrations/serigala-anjing-lupin-canis-lupus-3022813/

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