62% of people claim that their pets understand what they say.
Whether or not animals can hear, recognise and possibly even understand what humans say,
has always been a profound mystery.
Recent evidence attempts to reveal, once and for all, whether Tony the terrier knows the
difference between “good boy” and “Tony, did you chew my slippers?”
Dogs may respond to these sentences, but do dogs and other animals actually understand
the meaning behind those sentences?
Or are they just well-trained?
You may be very surprised by what you’re about to discover about animal perception.
In 1984, researchers at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California noticed something
quite unusual.
They claimed that they heard voices of people talking around an enclosure where they kept
a Beluga whale named NOC.
They were fairly certain it wasn’t anything paranormal, after all the voices sounded so…
real.
Eventually a diver was in NOC’s tank and he noticed the strangest thing.
NOC, the Beluga whale, was talking to him, in an eerily human-like voice.
Incredibly, the whale reportedly told the diver to “get out”.
This is an actual recording of NOC imitating human speech.
Kinda sounds like a human talking through a kazoo, doesn’t it?
That’s because unlike humans who use their larynx, whales use their nasal tract to produce
sounds, making everything sound all nasally.
It’s believed that NOC, having lived most of his life in close proximity to humans,
learnt to mimic the human voice.
But the real question is, was NOC merely repeating noises he picked up from humans, or did he
actually understand the meaning behind what he was saying?
Asian elephants, seals and parrots have also been known to imitate human speech, but do
they understand what they are saying?
And do they understand what we say to them?
In 1891 a German high school mathematics teacher named Wilhelm Von Osten convinced himself
that animals could be taught basic mathematics.
He tried to teach maths to a cat, a horse and a bear.
The cat couldn’t care less and was only interested in itself, the bear was just downright
hostile towards him but the horse showed great promise.
After extensive tutelage, the horse, named Hans, learnt to tap his hoof in response to
numbers Von Osten wrote on his blackboard.
If Von Osten wrote the number two, Hans would tap his hoof twice, if he wrote four, Hans
would tap four times, and so on.
Spurred on by this success, Von Osten proceeded to teach Hans to answer basic mathematical
equations.
Von Osten would write on the blackboard “2 + 2 =” and Hans would tap his hoof four
times.
Von Osten was delighted and exhibited Hans to the public all over Germany.
During these shows, which Von Osten never charged admission for, the crowd were awe-stricken
as Hans correctly answered an array of basic maths equations by using his hoof to tap out
the answers.
Hans could add, subtract, multiply, divide and even work out the square root of a number.
Hans would correctly answer around 89% of the questions.
The news of “Hans the genius horse” rapidly spread across Germany.
But along with Hans’ fame came critics and skeptics.
A psychologist, Oskar Pfungst asked to do some experiments with Hans, to which Von Osten
agreed.
Oskar Pfungst erected a large tent to perform the experiments in, to eradicate the possibility
of Hans being influenced by outside stimuli.
As a control test, Pfungst asked Von Osten to step inside the tent and ask Hans mathematical
questions like he usually does.
As expected, Hans got most of the questions correct.
However, Pfungst then asked Von Osten to move a little farther away from Hans whilst he
asked the questions and subsequently, Hans got far fewer answers correct.
Finally, Pfungst told Von Osten to ask Hans questions that he knew Von Osten did not know
the answer to.
When Von Osten asked these questions, the accuracy of Hans’ answers fell to almost
zero.
It appeared that in order for Hans to get the answer correct, the person asking the
question, had to know the answer to the question also.
These results were very strange, but incredibly interesting, so Pfungst investigated further.
He observed Von Osten’s facial expressions and posture whilst he was asking the questions.
Pfungst noticed Von Osten’s facial expression and posture change, right after he asked a
question.
His face and posture would tense up in expectation of Hans’ answer.
However, each time Hans tapped his hoof and got closer to the correct answer, Von Osten
would relax slightly and his posture, expressions and mannerisms would change.
As soon as Hans tapped his hoof enough times so that he had reached the correct answer,
Von Osten’s posture and expressions would relax and become happier, because he was relieved
that Hans had seemingly arrived at the correct answer, all by himself.
It transpired that the horse was receiving small visual clues that acted as feedback.
The horse would start tapping as soon as he observed Von Osten asking the question and
then tensing up.
When the tension had alleviated from Von Osten’s face, Hans would stop tapping his hoof.
Hans was never actually doing any mathematics; he was simply well attuned to his owner’s
visual clues.
Von Osten was shocked at this revelation, because he was completely unaware that he
was providing Hans with these unconscious visual clues.
He genuinely thought his horse was a genius.
The results of Pfungst’s experiment had enormous effects on how all scientific experiments
would be carried out in the future.
This phenomenon came to be known as “The Clever Hans Effect”.
The Clever Hans Effect, as we know it today, is when an experimenter unwittingly alters
the results of an experiment, simply because he or she is expecting a certain result.
The simple expectation for something to happen, can have huge consequences on an experiment’s
results, without the experimenter even realising it.
These days, necessary measures are taken when working with both animals and humans to prevent
the Clever Hans effect from altering the results of experiments.
A border collie named Rico came into the spotlight in 2004 after being intensively studied by
animal psychologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
The researchers showed such a great interest in Rico because his owners reported that he
could understand over 200 words.
A feat previously unheard of in the canine kingdom.
To test whether Rico’s skills were a bunch of fluff or a truly bone-a-fide talent, the
researchers set up an experiment.
The researchers arranged 200 toys on the floor in a room adjacent to were Rico was being
held, they did this ten toys at a time.
Each toy had a unique name, such as “fluffy” or “squeezy”; Rico’s owner had already
trained him to remember the name of each toy.
Each time the researchers let Rico into the room with the toys and asked Rico to fetch
a toy, then another toy and another.
Until Rico had fetched all 10 toys.
Whilst the researchers were issuing commands to Rico, they stayed on the other side of
a dividing wall, where Rico could hear them but not see them, to eliminate the Clever
Hans effect.
In total, Rico successfully remembered and retrieved 93% of the toys.
Impressive, but this was only a test of Rico’s memory, not his cognitive function – ie.
his ability to use logic and inference, just like a human.
So the researchers did a second experiment.
They arranged seven items in the room with an eight item which was brand new, which they
gave a unique name to.
Rico had never seen or heard the name of this new item before.
Amazingly when Rico was let into the room and asked to fetch the new item, he was very
quickly able to infer which was the new toy and fetched it straight away.
Rico seemingly used a process of deduction and elimination.
This is called “fast mapping”, a process where one is able to quickly learn a new concept
after a single exposure to brand new information.
Human toddlers do this all the time, it’s how they learn.
Even more amazingly Rico was able to fetch the new toys again, four weeks later, having
only seen them once.
Out of the six new items that Rico was shown, four weeks prior, he remembered three of them,
four weeks later.
Interestingly three out of six is the same rate at which adult humans are able to remember
things that they saw four weeks ago.
Chaser is another border collie who can reportedly remember the name of 1,000 toys and can retrieve
each one of them, just like Rico.
But Chaser has another unique talent.
She is able to recognise verbs.
From a young age Chaser’s owner, a retired psychologist, trained Chaser to understand
and utilise three verbs: nose, paw and fetch.
When Chaser’s owner says “paw slinky”, Chaser will go over to the toy named slinky
and put her paw on it.
Similarly, if “nose slinky” is said, Chaser will put her nose on the slinky toy and when
“fetch slinky” is said, Chaser will fetch the toy.
Chaser’s owner is able to swap the verb and the name of the toy for any one of 1,000
different toys and Chaser will go over to the correct toy and do the correct action
almost one hundred percent of the time.
That’s about the same cognitive ability as a three-year-old human child.
This also demonstrates something astonishing.
Chaser doesn’t simply remember each and every command, it’s not just a cheap memory
trick.
Chaser’s brain is actually using cognitive function to determine what to do in each given
situation.
This is no different to how a human brain works.
Although this is rather basic stuff for an adult human.
It’s an amazing display of cognitive ability and logical inference for an animal.
It demonstrates that dogs understand what we say, provided they are given the opportunity
to learn these human-like concepts as a puppy.
But that’s not different from a human, human’s have to learn this stuff too, we aren’t
born knowing what “go get daddy a beer” means.
As a baby we learn the individual words that construct that sentence and then as a toddler,
we use our brain’s cognitive ability, especially our fast mapping ability, to know what we
should do when those words are arranged into that sentence.
Just like Chaser is doing.
Dog’s aren’t able to learn as fast or to the same extent as humans, so realistically
their ability is capped compared to a human.
However, provided they are given the correct education and training from an early age,
dogs most definitely can understand at least a small percentage of what you say to them.
So when you say “time for ‘walkies’” and your dog goes freaking mental.
It may not just be because they have associated the word “walkies” with running about
outside with their beloved owner; there’s actually some very basic level of understanding
there.
But don’t think you can go and have full-blown, esoteric conversations with your canine buddy.
They may understand the odd word or two, but first and foremost, dogs use smell, to communicate
and differentiate between objects and people.
They’re going to understand a lot more of what you’re trying to communicate to then,
if you roll around in the garden for ten minutes then let them sniff you, than if you try to
explain to them why you had such a bad day at work.
But so far we’ve only talked about dogs, horses and whales, what about other animals?
After all the spectrum of animal cognition spans the entire animal kingdom.
Take Koko the gorilla for example.
Koko is a female gorilla who has learnt a modified version of American Sign Language.
Koko was taught from an early age and now, she can reportedly understand and use 1,000
different signs of what her trainer calls “Gorilla Sign Language” and she understands
over 2,000 words of spoken English.
Naturally Koko has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, articles and books.
But whether or not Koko actually understands sign language in the same way a human does,
is a topic of hot debate.
Some researchers argue that Koko hasn’t actually mastered sign language at all and
she doesn’t understand the words she is signing.
They insist that Koko’s human-like sign language abilities are a result of operant
conditioning.
Operant conditioning is when someone learns to do something because there’s a reward
at the end of it.
For example, if you showed a toddler three different coloured boxes, blue, green and
red and placed a sweet in the green box - the toddler would then learn to always open the
green box in the future, in order to get the sweet.
Koko may have simply learnt to make certain shapes and signs with her hands because she
is rewarded for doing so.
Video evidence showed that Koko was also being influenced by the Clever Hans effect.
Her trainers were giving her unconscious facial clues to prompt her to make certain gestures
with her hands.
Despite all this, Koko’s trainers are adamant that there’s more going on in Koko’s head
than researchers give her credit for.
One piece of evidence which suggests a greater level of cognition in Koko’s brain, occurred
when Koko’s baby was taken away from her.
The day after her baby was removed, she reportedly signed the word “baby” to her keeper.
This is known as displacement, the ability to talk about objects that are not currently
present in the room and it’s something that we thought was unique to humans and it’s
very rarely observed in the animal kingdom.
Also, Koko has been known to talk about new objects that she hasn’t even been taught
how to sign.
For example, Koko has never been taught the sign language for the the word “ring”.
But Koko combined the signs for “finger” and “bracelet” to refer to a ring.
If you think about it, a ring is just a tiny bracelet for your finger, that’s pretty
smart going Koko.
Events such as this suggest that Koko has a higher level of understanding of the words
she is actually signing.
But there’s a dark side that comes with so much gorilla intelligence.
Koko enjoys seeing human nipples and she often asks her female caregivers using sign language,
to show her their nipples.
This unusual behavior actually resulted in a sexual harassment lawsuit by one of Koko’s
female caregivers in 2005.
Maybe it’s not such a good idea we try to communicate with animals.
Dolphins are often said to be one of the smartest animals in the world and they certainly proved
it in a 1984 study.
Two bottlenose dolphins were taught human language.
The first dolphin named Phoenix was taught how to comprehend human speech.
The second dolphin, Akeakamai, was taught a form of sign language.
Both dolphins were taught a large variety of words, such as object names, actions and
object modifiers.
All of which could be combined and rearranged into hundreds of unique sentences to form
a command.
For example, “swim to the blue ring” or “pick up the red ring”.
The commands were given to the dolphins using computed generated voices and videos, to prevent
the Clever Hans effect.
Both dolphins were able to comprehend and execute the given commands at a much higher
success rate than what would be considered chance.
Understanding words and simple one-word commands is one thing.
But for an animal to understand complex three-to-five word commands and accurately follow them,
is quite simply, astonishing.
Experiments such as these prove that many animals have an unprecedented level of understanding
of human speech and communication.
Up to now we’ve only explored a minute fraction of intellect within the animal kingdom, who
knows what some animals are really capable of.
A real life planet of the apes may be just around the corner.
But until then you should probably watch what you’re saying around your pets.
They may be listening a bit more attentively than you think.