If you’ve been amazed at the way your dog seems to understand what you’re saying, it could be because their brains are wired in similar ways to those of humans.
For the first time, scientists have scanned human and dog brains while they are conscious and found the same brain regions light up when we hear certain sounds and tones of voice. Researchers from Hungary’s MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group trained 11 dogs to lay motionless in a functional MRI (fMRI) scanner so that they could accurately capture brain images.
Dog behaviour specialist Nathan Williams told ninemsn the findings are interesting, however dogs respond strongest to non-verbal cues.
“Dogs read us without listening to the words we speak,” he said.
“They pick up on the way we stand, the way we breathe, the scent we are giving off.” Williams said the way we say words to dogs is more important than the actual words we say. “If you say the word “okay” but you are stressed, the dog will pick up that you are saying, ‘freak out, get stressed’,” Williams said. “But if you are really confident and calm and literally projecting it’s okay, the dog will pick that up.”