Hungarian scientists conducted an intriguing experiment.
Most dogs can easily learn a few simple commands, such as "sit!" or "lie down!" – of course, if there is someone to teach them. Many are capable of learning the names of a couple of toys. However, there are dogs that can remember dozens or even hundreds of words, naturally in connection with the objects those words denote. Super-capable dogs are not commonly found, but researchers studying animal intelligence know where to look for them.
Employees of the University of Budapest, who have been working with dogs for a long time, wanted to find out if dogs can memorize new words just by listening to human conversations. Humans develop this ability by the age of one and a half: a child absorbs new words from the speech of adults talking to each other.
This does not refer to targeted teaching; a child learns the language by observing and listening to others: what they talk about, what they hold in their hands, what they look at, what they point to, etc. An experiment was decided upon with ten dogs that exhibited linguistic talent. They were either specifically shown and named a new toy, or the dogs listened from the side to a conversation between two people discussing another new toy, without ever being addressed.
In both cases, the name of the toy was mentioned several times over eight minutes, and there were several such eight-minute training sessions. Then the toy was taken to an adjacent room, and the dogs were asked to bring it back.
The article in Science states that seven out of ten dogs learned the new name, and this proportion was the same for both targeted teaching and eavesdropping training. The accuracy of the test after eavesdropping training reached 100% – that is, in 100% of cases, the dog brought back exactly what it was named. Overall, the effectiveness of direct teaching and eavesdropping training was the same.
