So where are all the people who apparently think that pets can't understand basic vocabulary? It's treated like some wild revelation when it comes up in articles like this, but anyone who's ever had a dog or cat knows what the reactions are like when words like "walk" or "bath" or "tuna" get mentioned. For particularly attentive dogs you can even end up with the euphemism treadmill from "walk" to "W-A-L-K" to substituting other phrases to keep them from realizing what you're talking about.
Agreed; this is the default belief of anyone who has interacted with a dog.
If someone were to advance the thesis that dogs were incapable of understanding words I would require some pretty strong evidence before I would believe them.
The soundboard stuff in the article -- not so much. Training a dog to press a button is simple conditioning, but implying any sort of understanding of the language is a bit of a stretch. It sounds like the referenced research (I haven't read the paper) only tests the other way around (that dogs can understand some speech).
If you can show me a dog trained to understand "stand on the yellow bench" and similar commands, but never actually hearing the specific command "sit on the red chair" and being able to execute that, then maybe I'm interested, but otherwise a dog hitting a button that says "I love you" is great for instagram but is indistinguishable from a button that says "look at me and pet me please".
Lots of people think animals are dumb beasts. My neighbor threw a party with a bunch of people in his PhD program. Our dogs hang out and we left the gate open between our properties so the dogs could go back and forth.
One of the PhD students was amazed that if you threw a ball over the fence the dog knew how to go around the fence and through the gate to get the ball.
This speaks to an interesting question that is extremely difficult to answer:
"Can pets think conceptually?"
A word like "table", to a human, does not represent a concrete. It represents an abstraction, ALL tables, all things that have a flat surface and four legs.
When a dog hears "table", or "walk", do they understand the abstract concept of walking, or tables in general? Or do they interpret it as a very specific, concrete verb or noun?
That is the 6 million dollar question when it comes to an animal's ability to truly, genuinely understand spoken language. This is also why some philosophers conclude that animals cannot reason (it's a hypothesis, though, we don't know). Reason requires abstract thought and being able to prove that an animal is capable of abstract thinking is incredibly difficult.
I can believe it with dogs, but my cat of almost 20 years has never indicated any understanding of or interest in human speech. She sometimes reacts to tone of voice, sometimes to specific noises (like treat baggie crumbling when opened), but not any particular words. Half the time she could care less about the tone or noises as well. That seems pretty in line with my general understanding of cat "psychology".
On the one hand, people put a lot of meaning behind things that may not have it.
On the other hand, I can tell one of my dogs which room my wife is in and he'll go directly to that room to get her. My house isn't small, either. I didn't specifically train him to do that, and it doesn't even come up that often, so I don't actually know why it works.
I did a month of quiet Yoga (no talking whatsoever) and brought my dog with me for the ride. I came to realize that the words are mostly there to help me, she doesn't care. If I switch the word and say it with the same energy/body language, the result is the same.
I don't even need words anymore, body language is more effective with my dog.
The researchers aimed to rule out variables such as a dog responding to their owner's cues — like, the owner putting on shoes to go outside — the identity of the human saying the word, or memorizing the location of buttons on the board.
Dogs can absolutely learn sign language for basic commands. There are books about it. We had some success with ours. The main difficulty is you do have to use some kind of sound to get their attention if they're not looking at you. (Perhaps a clap would do.)
Perhaps off-topic, but we had a dog that knew swearing when she heard it.
Most dogs are well-attuned to both positive and negative emotions. In particular, when a human starts yelling and throwing things, they get the hell out of dodge. So it's obviously not a surprise that a dog would beat a hasty exit when their human emits a flurry of exasperated expletives.
However, our dog took it a bit further. Before kids, my wife and I had a habit of swearing in our normal, neutral conversations. It took a while before I noticed the pattern but eventually I found that even a light and airy "well, fuck" essentially inaudibly under my breath would quite reliably cause our dog to sigh heavily, get up, and saunter out of the room with considerably more than a whiff of indignation.
Do we have blind confirmation? As in, do the dogs carry out volleys with people that don't know them? Dogs could be picking up body language, pheromones, and other signals rather than comprehending; without, this could be the old vaudeville act of the counting horse that stops tapping when the owner reacts.
I knew a dog that had a decent vocabulary. He would visibly react to words like CAR, WALK, or PARK. He also understood PARTY and MEAT and would wag his tail for PART and lick his chops to MEAT. One time we were going to a BBQ so I explained to him we were taking the CAR to a MEAT PARTY and he got super excites, wagging his tail and going to the door all while frothing at the mouth. Anecdotal but it certainly looked like he could synthesize concepts and imagine what was going to happen in the near future.
I've done a few other experiments with my foreign speaking friends and it appeared to me that dogs understand the language their owners speak primarily.
The author Mary Robinette Kowal has a cat, Elsie, who uses a button board. I’m reluctant to call it language exactly, but it is definitely a kind of communication.
It’s interesting how words shift in meaning with the cat, so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant. Elsie also will come up with nicknames for people she encounters relatively frequently, not always complimentary.
> so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant.
That's rich. It exactly mirrors how we have come to use gastronomical words such as "disgusting" for moral opprobrium. The same parts of the limbic system are used to process both concepts.
Anything that's bad could be described as 'shitty' which is about as close as we can get to the same usage.
Echoing others, everyone knew this but we do need to actually test and prove it.
My cat knows speak, sit, 360, shake, nose kiss, and up as far as tricks go. Originally, we paired both a hand motion and the word. Now, either works. I can make the sit gesture, she’ll sit. Or just saying sit works too. She’s observed how we open our doors and now is capable of leaping up and pulling the handle herself, including a little wiggle to pull the door open enough to wedge her face through for final entry.
Cats seem to use tone in their meows to tell you a lot, and while I can’t say I understand really, it’s clear when there’s a hello chirp or an upset, lower tone yowl.
People spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on their pets. I'm sure a company will come along to try and make one because holy shit you'd make a lot of money selling the app that lets your pet talk to you.
The article is clearly a stark example of selection bias, ignoring all the times where the dog didn't press relevant buttons and highlighting random successes.
[+] [-] crooked-v|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewla|1 year ago|reply
If someone were to advance the thesis that dogs were incapable of understanding words I would require some pretty strong evidence before I would believe them.
The soundboard stuff in the article -- not so much. Training a dog to press a button is simple conditioning, but implying any sort of understanding of the language is a bit of a stretch. It sounds like the referenced research (I haven't read the paper) only tests the other way around (that dogs can understand some speech).
If you can show me a dog trained to understand "stand on the yellow bench" and similar commands, but never actually hearing the specific command "sit on the red chair" and being able to execute that, then maybe I'm interested, but otherwise a dog hitting a button that says "I love you" is great for instagram but is indistinguishable from a button that says "look at me and pet me please".
[+] [-] not_the_fda|1 year ago|reply
One of the PhD students was amazed that if you threw a ball over the fence the dog knew how to go around the fence and through the gate to get the ball.
[+] [-] gspencley|1 year ago|reply
"Can pets think conceptually?"
A word like "table", to a human, does not represent a concrete. It represents an abstraction, ALL tables, all things that have a flat surface and four legs.
When a dog hears "table", or "walk", do they understand the abstract concept of walking, or tables in general? Or do they interpret it as a very specific, concrete verb or noun?
That is the 6 million dollar question when it comes to an animal's ability to truly, genuinely understand spoken language. This is also why some philosophers conclude that animals cannot reason (it's a hypothesis, though, we don't know). Reason requires abstract thought and being able to prove that an animal is capable of abstract thinking is incredibly difficult.
[+] [-] amichail|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] romanhn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] RajT88|1 year ago|reply
Possibly by the time he could have learned it, he was pretty old.
My current dog knows the basic ones like, "walk", "outside", "lunch", etc.
[+] [-] readthenotes1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] govideo|1 year ago|reply
He flat out laughed at me in front of the whole class, and said No Way. I quietly disagreed with him.
When I got home, I told the story to my bird :)
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] larrik|1 year ago|reply
On the other hand, I can tell one of my dogs which room my wife is in and he'll go directly to that room to get her. My house isn't small, either. I didn't specifically train him to do that, and it doesn't even come up that often, so I don't actually know why it works.
[+] [-] pjerem|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] codr7|1 year ago|reply
I did a month of quiet Yoga (no talking whatsoever) and brought my dog with me for the ride. I came to realize that the words are mostly there to help me, she doesn't care. If I switch the word and say it with the same energy/body language, the result is the same.
I don't even need words anymore, body language is more effective with my dog.
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bityard|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] bityard|1 year ago|reply
Most dogs are well-attuned to both positive and negative emotions. In particular, when a human starts yelling and throwing things, they get the hell out of dodge. So it's obviously not a surprise that a dog would beat a hasty exit when their human emits a flurry of exasperated expletives.
However, our dog took it a bit further. Before kids, my wife and I had a habit of swearing in our normal, neutral conversations. It took a while before I noticed the pattern but eventually I found that even a light and airy "well, fuck" essentially inaudibly under my breath would quite reliably cause our dog to sigh heavily, get up, and saunter out of the room with considerably more than a whiff of indignation.
[+] [-] TheLockranore|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] denimboy|1 year ago|reply
I've done a few other experiments with my foreign speaking friends and it appeared to me that dogs understand the language their owners speak primarily.
[+] [-] dhosek|1 year ago|reply
An example is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C48uKZ8veql/
It’s interesting how words shift in meaning with the cat, so litterbox, for example, has come to be a word for anything unpleasant. Elsie also will come up with nicknames for people she encounters relatively frequently, not always complimentary.
[+] [-] philipov|1 year ago|reply
That's rich. It exactly mirrors how we have come to use gastronomical words such as "disgusting" for moral opprobrium. The same parts of the limbic system are used to process both concepts.
Anything that's bad could be described as 'shitty' which is about as close as we can get to the same usage.
[+] [-] ChoHag|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|1 year ago|reply
I have zero doubt that our dog can do the former. Not sure about the latter.
[+] [-] buildbot|1 year ago|reply
My cat knows speak, sit, 360, shake, nose kiss, and up as far as tricks go. Originally, we paired both a hand motion and the word. Now, either works. I can make the sit gesture, she’ll sit. Or just saying sit works too. She’s observed how we open our doors and now is capable of leaping up and pulling the handle herself, including a little wiggle to pull the door open enough to wedge her face through for final entry.
Cats seem to use tone in their meows to tell you a lot, and while I can’t say I understand really, it’s clear when there’s a hello chirp or an upset, lower tone yowl.
[+] [-] pizza|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fragmede|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] erehweb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] whereistimbo|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] noman-land|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dboreham|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iLoveOncall|1 year ago|reply
There are countless proofs that dogs don't understand words, and it's extremely easy to demonstrate: https://youtube.com/shorts/CIDZG7bdP7k