Can Dogs Talk?
The following passage is adapted from an article entitled “Dogs as Smart as Two-Year Old Kids” (2009 by Jeanna Bryner).
- Maya, a noisy, seven-year-old
- pooch, looks straight at me. And
- with just a little prompting from
- her owner says, “I love you.”
- Actually, she says “Ahh rooo uuu!”
- Maya is working hard to produce
- what sounds like real speech.
- “She makes these sounds that
- really, really sound like words to
- everyone who hears her, but I
- think you have to believe,” says
- her owner, Judy Brookes.
- You’ve probably seen this sort of
- scene on television. These dog
- owners may be onto something:
- Psychologist and dog expert
- Stanley Coren of the University of
- British Columbia tells the story
- of a colleague who always greeted
- her dog, Brandy, with a cheerful,
- two-syllable “Hel-lo!” It wasn’t
- long until Brandy returned the
- greeting, which sounded very
- much like her owner’s salutation.
- But do dogs really talk? In 1912
- Harry Miles Johnson of Johns
- Hopkins University said,
- emphatically, “no.” He generally
- agreed with the findings of Oskar
- Pfungst of the Institute of
- Psychology at the University of
- Berlin who studied a dog famous
- for its large vocabulary. The dog’s
- speech is “the production of vocal
- sounds which produce illusion in
- the hearer,” Johnson wrote. He
- went on to warn that we should
- not be surprised if “scientists of
- a certain class… proclaim that
- they have completely demonstrated
- the presence in lower animals of
- ‘intelligent imitation’.”
- Nothing in the last century has
- really changed that scientific
- opinion. So what are Maya and her
- cousins doing? It’s more
- appropriate to call it imitating than
- talking, says Gary Lucas, a
- psychology scholar at Indiana
- University. Dogs vocalize with each
- other to convey emotions—and
- they express their emotions by
- varying their tones. So it pays for
- dogs to be sensitive to different
- tones. Dogs are able to imitate
- humans as well as they do because
- they pick up on the differences in
- our tonal patterns.
- Lucas likens this behavior to that
- of bonobos, primates that can
- imitate some tonal patterns,
- including vowel sounds, pitch
- changes, and rhythms. “The vocal
- skills of some dogs and cats suggest
- that they might also have some
- selective tonal imitation skills,”
- he says. What’s happening between
- dog and owner-turned-voice-coach
- is fairly straightforward: Owner
- hears the dog making a sound that
- resembles a phrase, says the
- phrase back to the dog, who then
- repeats the sound and is rewarded
- with a treat. Eventually the dog
- learns a modified version of her
- original sound. As Lucas puts it,
- “dogs have limited vocal imitation
- skills, so these sounds usually need
- to be shaped by selective attention
- and social reward.”
- A pug that says, ‘I love you’ is very
- cute, but the pug has no idea what
- it means,” Coren says. “If dogs
- could talk, they would tell you,
- ‘I’m just in it for the cookies.’”
- Scientists have made some
- progress in their study of this
- important subject: They’ve learned
- why dogs, and other animals, have
- rather poor pronunciation. They
- “don’t use their tongues and lips
- very well, and that makes it difficult
- for them to match many of the
- sounds that their human partners
- make,” Lucas says. “Try saying
- ‘puppy’ without using your lips
- and tongue.”
- Despite what they may lack in the
- elocution department, dogs do
- communicate their feelings to
- humans as well as read our cues,
- thanks to domestication, Julia
- Riedel and colleagues of the Max
- Planck Institute for Evolutionary
- Anthropology reported. Dogs
- follow people’s pointing, body
- posture, the direction of their gaze,
- and touches for cues to find hidden
- food. They also gaze at their trainer
- when they need more information.
- Some dogs learn to understand an
- impressive number of words, as
- well. A gifted border collie, Rico,
- mastered the names of more than
- 200 objects using a technique
- called fast-tracking that small
- children also employ. Researchers
- introduced a novel item into Rico’s
- mix of toys then asked him to
- retrieve it. He did so by associating
- the unfamiliar name with the
- unfamiliar object. He even
- remembered the name of the toy
- a month later.
- “That’s the kind of fast-tracking
- or exclusionary learning, which we
- used to think only human beings
- and the talking apes could use,”
- Coren says. “For the psychologists
- it was, ‘Wow, how did he learn
- that word?!’”