Yes, dogs understand words like humans, an experiment has proven it.

Decoding: For the first time, a team has shown that dogs understand that a word represents an object. Apart from humans, it is the only species where this has been demonstrated.

When he hears “Allez Médor, ramène la balle!”, he immediately gets up and goes to fetch his toy. Médor knows that this sequence of sounds “ramène la balle” instructs him to bring the ball back to his master. But does he understand the meaning of the word “balle”? Does he know that this isolated word refers to the round object he loves to chase after? Surprisingly, yes. A team has just discovered that dogs understand that certain words refer to specific objects. Apart from humans, this is the first time this ability has been observed in an animal.

Getting into the minds of our four-legged friends has not been an easy task. For subjects who cannot speak, like babies or animals, research has so far favored experiments where they have an active choice to make, such as showing an object or going to fetch it after hearing its name. In these kinds of tests, very few dogs have shown good results. Some dogs occasionally succeed in the exercise, but at a frequency that suggests it was more likely due to chance. “It is assumed that they get bored or misunderstand the command,” explains Lilla Magyari, a professor of social sciences at the University of Stavanger in Norway and author of the study in Current Biology. “Some dogs, considered exceptional, can learn hundreds of object names. But ordinary dogs, aside from responding to a command, do not seem to demonstrate such abilities.”

This time, researchers chose to conduct a passive experiment with 18 dogs, without giving them specific commands to follow. The dogs were simply placed in front of their owners, who showed them a familiar object while naming it. For example, the owner would say, “Zara, look, the ball!” while waving a ball, a frisbee, a rope, a fish-shaped plush toy, or any other familiar toy to the dog. Using non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG), researchers were able to observe what happens in the dogs’ brains when they hear different words.

“In humans, we know about neuronal markers, which are the circuits in the brain that are activated when we understand a word,” explains Lilla Magyari. When the shown object matches the heard word, certain circuits activate. Conversely, when the shown object does not match the spoken word, a ‘negative’ circuit activates in the brain. Remarkably, the dogs included in the study showed exactly the same results as one would expect in humans. There were distinct patterns in brain activity, one when the object matched the word and another when it did not. This suggests that when dogs hear familiar words, their brain activity indicates they form a mental representation of it in their mind, akin to humans.

Le chien est le meilleur ami de l’Homme depuis cinq mille ans.

This study particularly bridges the gap between the rare “super dogs” and other dogs that might not seem to understand much. “We used to think that a dog’s ability to understand a word was linked to the number of object words they identified. But that’s not the case,” admits Lilla Magyari. “No matter how many words a dog understands, the words they know always activate a mental representation. This suggests that all dogs have this ability, not just a few with extraordinary profiles,” adds Marianna Boros, specializing in neuroethics at the Budapest Faculty of Science.

Dogs, our companions for over five thousand years, therefore understand more than they let on. “For thousands of years, they have been selected to cooperate and communicate with humans. Their domestication may have played a role in their ability to understand the meaning of words, similar to humans,” says Boros. Alternatively, this could be a trait shared by all mammals, but that remains to be proven. Cats, horses, and other animals domesticated by humans may also understand the meaning of words. This is what the team hopes to explore in future research.

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