Can a dog learn by overhearing you speak? Study shows it's possible

Budapest (dpa) – Anyone who has kept different dogs as pets will have noticed over time that some are more attuned than others to speech and are quicker to pick up commands. Some, of course, soon get that 'sit' means just that and 'heel' means walk with me – and respond accordingly. No less endearingly, perhaps, others might just stare back blankly, panting and looking for a pat on the head before returning to their seemingly aimless wandering and random chewing. But according to researchers at Hungary's Eötvös Loránd University, a very small subset of dogs can go "much further" than just understanding basic commands and can learn by eavesdropping on people. The team contends that there are rare cases of "gifted" dogs so intelligent that not only can they be trained to understand hundreds of words, they can figure out the meaning of words such as rope and frisbee from chatter around them and can do so "at an astonishing pace." "They do this naturally, during everyday play with their owners," the Budapest-based team said, declaring that no training is needed for dogs so smart. In other words, when a dog’s ears prick up while people are talking, it could be that the animal is not just on the alert for alarming or unusual noises, but is another of these pooch prodigies able to pick up on signals and meanings from words they overhear. "They not only retain these names for long periods but also extend the labels to categorize their toys, offering a rare window into canine cognition," the researchers said, following a series of meticulous tests and researchpublished in the journal Science. Such dogs "possess sociocognitive skills functionally parallel to those of 18-month-old children," the researchers said in their paper. The following information is not intended for publication dpa spr coh

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