Lassie (L) and animal trainer Chelsea Riggins speak onstage at Man's Best Friend: Dogs in Film panel during day 2 of the TCM Classic Film Festival 2016 (Photo : Getty Images/Jesse Grant )
Dogs are indeed a man's best friend; everyone who owns one understands the reason why. And most of the time, most dog owners feel like their beloved pets understand their every move and every word. And science says it could be true.
According to UPI, a new study confirms that you can communicate to your puppy or your dog by speaking in a certain way so that they can better understand you. The study says that animals pay more attention when we increase our pitch when talking to them. This manner of talking to dogs is called "dog-directed speech" and is said to be more effective in encouraging a reaction from them compared to human's natural speech.
This research was tested when "play back" experiments were facilitated where recordings of humans repeating the phrases "Hi! Hello cutie! Who's a good boy? Come here! Good boy! Yes! Come here sweetie pie! What a good boy!" were used. As the animals were made to listen to the recordings, their behaviors were also observed. They have discovered that puppies responded more to the recordings compared to the adult dogs. But ultimately, dog-directed speech is said to be useful to communicate with canines of any age.
In another research, Attila Andics, from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and author of the study, told TODAY via email, "We talk to dogs all the time but we know little about what they get from all this. If dog brains also process what we say, then we have to re-think what makes words uniquely human,"
His study provides proof that it is not only a human ability to comprehend language because dogs also can develop an understanding of the human language. The researchers scanned the brains of the dogs as they listen to the voices of their trainers. They found that dogs respond as they hear praising tones speaking praising words.
"Praise is rewarding for dogs, but only if both word meaning and intonation match," Andics said.
Although this trick may not be working all the time, this research is just one of the many that prove that indeed, humans and dogs have an unbreakable bond and share a unique relationship that makes them understand each other than we realize.
