Long recognized as a skill used by toddlers who are learning to understand language, scientists have discovered that a rare subset of “genius dogs” has also mastered the art of eavesdropping to decode human communication.
“We found that these dogs can learn the names of new toys when they listen to their owners interact between them,” Shany Dror, a postdoctoral researcher at the Veterinary University in Vienna and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, told ABC News. “So, they can kind of eavesdrop on their owners’ conversation and pick up new words, new object labels from this.”
In a new peer-reviewed study, Dror, the lead researcher, called these precocious pups “Gifted Word Learner” (GWL) dogs who can surprisingly pick up hundreds of object names just by listening to their owners talk. Research suggests they learn as well as 1.5-year-old toddlers.
Unlike most dogs, GWL dogs can go beyond typical action commands like “sit” and “roll over.” They tend to develop a larger vocabulary naturally without guided training, as seen in one of the study’s participants, Basket, a seven-year-old Border Collie, who can retrieve her MetroCard on command.
“I think it shows us how complex the ability of dogs is and how complex are the social abilities of dogs,” Dror said.
However, Dror noted that not all dogs are gifted. While earlier research has shown that most dogs excel at reading human communication, the ELTE University study demonstrates “To what extent some dogs can bring this skill.”
“These dogs provide an exceptional model for exploring some of the cognitive abilities that enabled humans to develop language,” Dror said in a statement. “But we do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way — far from it.”