Dogs Can “Talk” To Us By Stringing Words Together

Having lived alongside humans since the Ice Age, dogs have unsurprisingly picked up a few of our tricks, with a knack for communication being among their top talents. According to new research, these conversational skills may be significantly more advanced than we previously thought, as some dogs appear able to combine multiple words in order to express themselves.

In Dean Koontz’s 1987 cult classic horror novel Watchers, a super-smart genetically modified golden retriever named Einstein develops the ability to talk to people by selecting printed words from a list. Take away the book’s sci-fi/fantasy element and multiple horrific deaths, and you’ve got an idea of how this new study went down.

While nowhere near as intelligent as Einstein (who also knows how to grab his owner a cold beer from the fridge), the 152 dogs who took part in the research were all trained by their owners to use soundboards, whereby buttons can be pressed to produce pre-recorded words or phrases. The study authors – three of whom have ties to the company that makes these soundboards – sought to determine if dogs deliberately choose which buttons to press, or if their selections are entirely random and accidental.

Dog owners were therefore asked to track the buttons pressed by their pets over a period of 21 months, leaving the researchers with nearly 195,000 soundboard interactions to analyze.

“The findings reveal that dogs are pressing buttons purposefully to express their desires and needs,” explained study author Federico Rossano in a statement. “When dogs combine two buttons, these sequences are not random but instead seem to reflect specific requests.”

Across all dogs, the most commonly selected single words or phrases included “food”, “treat”, and “go outside”. Interestingly, certain two-word combinations also appeared more often than would be expected by chance.

The most frequent of these were “food” + “treat”, and “own name” + “want”. What’s particularly striking here is that the latter pair was among the most popular combinations despite the fact that, individually, these two buttons were among the least frequently pressed.

Other meaningful combinations included “food” + “water” and “go outside” + “potty”, both of which were selected as pairs more often than would occur if the dogs were just randomly pressing buttons. 

“Therefore, our findings propose that dogs are differentiating between at least some of the buttons provided on their soundboards and, given the emergence of particular two-button concept combinations at the population level, that at least some dogs have associatively ascribed different meanings to different buttons,” write the study authors.

Further analysis revealed that dogs do not appear to be simply copying their owners’ use of the soundboards, as the animals’ word selections differ greatly from those of their human companions. For instance, owners tended to select the “I love you” button much more often than their pets, who clearly have other things on their minds.

“While dogs already communicate some of these needs, soundboards could allow for more precise communication,” said Rossano. “Instead of barking or scratching at the door, a dog may be able to tell you exactly what it wants, even combining concepts like ‘outside’ and ‘park’ or ‘beach.’ This could improve companionship and strengthen the bond between dogs and their owners.”

Hoping to take things to the next level, Rossano revealed that the team is planning to examine whether dogs can use soundboards to creatively combine words in order to communicate abstract concepts. “We want to know if dogs can use these soundboards to express ideas beyond their immediate needs, like absent objects, past experiences, or future events,” the researcher said. 

“If they can, it would drastically change how we think about animal intelligence and communication.”

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.