Many of us who have dogs and cats regularly speak to them as if they were people who understand exactly what we are saying.
That’s because we believe our furry friends actually do understand us.
Some people will tell you that you’re crazy or weird for having a full-fledged conversation with your dog.
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And despite what you truly believe on the inside, you might have been convinced that they were right a few years ago.
But as it turns out, your dog really DOES understand what you’re saying.
Even science says so.
“So dogs not only tell apart what we say and how we say it, but they can also combine the two, for a correct interpretation of what those words really meant,” Hungarian researcher Attila Andics told The Washington Post.
Andics says the same likely goes for your cats and other domesticated animals too.
Researchers were already aware that dogs had the ability to respond to human voices, match hundreds of objects to words, learn elements of grammar, and be directed by human speech.
But in this study, they learned that dogs are more like humans since dogs can process language using the same regions of the brain as people.
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This was believed to be the case by observing dogs but this study actually monitored canine brains.
Scientists at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest studied 13 family dogs.
They were mostly golden retrievers and border collies. The dogs were trained to sit still for seven minutes while an fMRI scanned them and measured their brain activity.
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During their scan, a trainer would speak words of praise, like “that’s it” and “clever,” and neutral words like “yet” and “if.”
The words were spoken in a neutral, happy, and “atta-boy” tone.
Dogs processed familiar words regardless of their intonation in their left hemispheres, like humans.
The dogs analyzed tone, or emotion behind the word, in the auditory regions of the right hemisphere of their brain.
Which is also what humans do.
“Co-author Tamás Faragó acknowledged that the left hemisphere’s response to praise words didn’t prove the dogs were comprehending meaning and not simply reacting to familiarity,” The Washington Post wrote.
“But, he said, it’s safe to assume the dogs hear the neutral words in daily human conversation as often as they hear the praise words, ‘so the main difference will be not familiarity, but whether the word is addressed to the dog or not.’ In other words, whether it has meaning for the pooch.”
But TikTok user Sarah Lawther didn’t need science to tell her what she already knows.
When she tells her 18-month-old Bull Terrier puppy that she’s beautiful or “the most beautiful girl in the whole entire world,” she knows that Honey understands what she is saying.
And Honey reacts in the most precious way ever.
Precious enough that millions of people watched the TikTok video of Honey’s reaction. Check out all the cuteness in the video below.
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