Scientists from Hungary said that dogs may not understand people as well as commonly believed. This is confirmed by a new analysis of the brain activity of pets when a person voices different commands and words.
With good training, dogs can behave better than some people, and many of their breeds still serve law enforcement, rescue and help us every day.
That is why dogs are called a friend of man and are considered one of the most intelligent animals.
But according to a new study by scientists from the University of Budapest, dogs can understand much less than we think.
Specialists analyzed the brain activity of dogs and their reaction to certain commands and sounds uttered aloud by humans.
Using electroencephalography, scientists have determined that the number of words that dogs can actually learn and remember is extremely limited. The researchers analyzed the reaction of animals to commands such as ” sit”, phonetically similar to these commands words, as well as meaningless sounds.
The obtained data on the brain activity of dogs show that they respond almost equally to words that are similar in sound but different in meaning.
Despite extremely good hearing in dogs, scientists suggest that these animals cannot understand the minimal differences in human speech sounds.
Moreover, if people have this ability manifests itself with age, both puppies and adult dogs do not understand phonetically similar words with different meanings.
That’s why dogs can respond to some words as similar commands, although people will find that they are taught new words.
For the same reason, the number of teams that can train dogs remains extremely limited.
But that obviously won’t stop people from talking to their pets.
