hey guys what's up it's Charlie here and today we're going to be looking at what
your dog things when you talk to them I'm sure many of us here have a pet dog
and I'm sure just as many people speak to their dogs as if they were people
sometimes you may think this is just for your benefit
but once your dog actually thinking when you speak to them well believe it or not
your dogs probably can actually understand you a lot more than you think
today we're going to look at some new experiments with dogs we're also going
to find out if they understand speech body language and emotions why they can
understand us and also how you can better communicate with your furry
friend but first why not subscribe and press the notification bell - believe it
or not there have been many many studies all about dogs cognition this is
basically dog's ability to understand humans this research goes all the way
back to the eighteen hundreds and is still carried out today one professor
named Brian hare from Emory University did a study in 2000 he found that dogs
can understand and relate to people's words emotions and body language
obviously in history they didn't have the technology that we have today and
that's why a new study done by a group named frontiers in neuroscience is so
amazing they've trained 12 dogs to retrieve two differently named objects
and they then measured the dog's brain activity using an MRI scanner one was a
toy pig named Pig and the other was a toy monkey named monkey the dog was
trained to differentiate between these two toys and then when the scientist
said go get the pig the dog did go to the pig and sure enough when it said go
get the monkey the dog went and retrieved the monkey toy so dogs can
clearly recognize names for things this means dogs will likely recognize
their own names and also the names of people in your family they may need some
training for this but their cognition definitely stretches to those limits the
scientist also did another test simultaneously as well as pig and monkey
they said some gibberish words such as Babu and Budnick when they did that the
dog went to other objects they had around the room in one instance the dog
went over to a hat and in another instance the dog went over to a doll but
when they did this while measuring with an MRI frame scanner they found
something amazing they found dogs brains light up more when they hear words
they've never heard before this is actually the opposite to how
human brains work human brains react much more strongly towards we know
that's why when you're in a foreign country you can hear people who speak
the same language to see you over everyone else really they're speaking of
the same or a quieter level but because human brains light up more when they
hear words they understand it means you can hear these words much more clearly
so why do dogs brings light up more when they hear random words they've never
heard before well the scientists said unlike humans who can immediately tell
gibberish dogs can't always make this differentiation they may actually be
trying harder to please their owners to receive food or praise so after all of
these experiments have been carried out can we actually say for sure do dogs
understand speech or not well the answer is partly in 2004 science magazine did a
study on a dog named Rico they did something called
first mapping new words to this dog this is kind of similar to how you learn
language as a child you don't know what things are called so the first time you
hear a word that isn't grained in your brain using this technique they were
able to teach Rico the names of 200 different items and within just four
weeks of training he was able to identify most of them and retrieve them
from a room but dogs actually understand more than just works a study by the
University of Sussex in the UK found that dogs can actually pick up on
emotional cues in our speech dogs process the meanings of words on the
left side of their brain but on the right side of their brains they process
the emotional cues in our words this means they can understand the difference
between good boy and bad boy they can basically tell if we're angry when
speaking or happy when speaking so dogs can partially understand speech but can
they understand our body language in 2012 a study was carried out which
heavily suggests dogs understand our body language
dogs were presented with two different servings of food one big and once
naturally most of the dogs went for the larger survey but then they did the same
experiment but with people involved it seemed that when people were involved
the portion size did not matter instead it was all about the people's body
language the dogs would never go to somebody with an angry or sad body
language but no matter what the portion size was - people with a friendly and
happy body language the dogs would always go - also when you're
communicating with your dog you should always look at your door that's because
they can actually recognize this part of body language a study found that dogs
have the similar brain capacity to a six to 12-month year old human baby and that
applies to recognizing when they're being directly addressed or having
information conveyed to them for example in one test a person said hi dog while
looking away from the dog they did this many times and most of the time the dog
did not look back at the hema however while they did the same test while the
person looked at the top while saying hi dog the dog looked way more often it
seemed it judged body language when differentiating when someone was talking
to them and not talking to them in both situations the dog would have been able
to hear thoughts only when the dog was being looked at didn't realize it was
being directly at rest and on that subject do dogs understand our emotions
we've already covered they can understand our emotional cues when we're
speaking but what about just by looking can they tell if humans happy or sad a
study by the University of Lincoln found dogs can differentiate between human
emotions based on facial expressions however they noted dogs may not be able
to tell the difference between positive and negative emotional states for
example they can tell the difference between a frowning face and a smiling
face but they don't necessarily know that smiling is a positive thing and
frowning is a negative thing but that begs the question why can't Doug's
understand us well the cool thing about this is that the reason why dogs are
capable of understanding us so well is actually a mystery some scientists say
this is a product of evolution and Sesa t that's because for thousands of
years dogs and humans have lived very closely together and a lot of the time
dogs do depend on humans many dogs today are bred specifically for humans this is
either for humans to use as pets or to use in jobs for example farm dogs police
dogs or racing dogs so it only makes sense that when one species depends on
another so much they would need to communicate and understand us but now
that you have all of this information you're probably asking how can I
communicate better with my dog well the first thing you can do is pay more
attention to how you speak to your door you can actually train your dog much
better if you use emotional cues in your voice it may sound silly but when you
tell your dog off make sure you do it in an angry voice and when you're being
affectionate to your dog and praising it make sure you do it in a very happy
voice kind of like you would to a baby this may sound funny but based on
research this actually works to train your dog a lot better also if you want
to get your dog's attention make sure you actually look in its direction when
saying its name this will improve your dog's ability to understand you're
actually directly addressing it and not just saying something to someone else
and finally make sure you always call your dog something consistent most
people have a name for their dog but every now and then they'll say something
like good boy instead of saying good boy you should actually use your dog's name
all the time this will help to cement that name in your dog's mind and realize
that that's them you're talking about this will allow you and your dog to have
a closer connection and for them to understand you better and vice-versa
check out the poll on the top right corner to vote for if you have a dog or
not and if you guys want some more amazing videos then why not check out my
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