Does the dog understand words?

Most dog owners consider their four-legged friend a member of the family and often converse with them. The dog looks attentively into the owner's eyes and listens. But do dogs understand words? According to a study by Canadian scientists, dogs can distinguish over 100 words. Pets understand not specific expressions, but figurative concepts.

Content

1 The dog can recognize signs
- 1.1 Different training methods
2 Dogs value images of objects

The dog can recognize signs

"Gestures are very important in training," explains Arsenio Sánchez, director of a Madrid canine training center. Dogs don't speak. They must mentally visualize a command to understand it."There are no instructions in the animal world," the dog trainer notes. "And dogs don't take orders."That's why it's best to accompany verbal commands with cues. For example, we prohibit a dog from barking at cats.

The word "cat" is not understood by animals. But if we point at a barking dog and tell it not to, the furry one will learn the prohibition.

Different training methods

"Using sound and visual cues, I can implant up to 50 concepts in a dog's mind," Sanchez shares his experience. A word must have some meaning for a four-legged friend. Owners sometimes misinterpret a command, and the dog doesn't remember it. When a dog understands the essence, it can achieve even the most challenging goals.

Canadian Stanley Coren divided the mental abilities of man's true friends into three groups:

Innate skills – the ability of a dog breed to perform the tasks for which it was created
Adaptive skills – the ability to solve problems independently
Study skills – the ability to learn

Dogs' skills are comparable to those of a two-year-old child, who memorizes approximately ten words a day. Dogs can be taught to count to five and add prime numbers.

Gestures are important in training

The researcher also divided purebred dogs into six groups based on their learning abilities.

Each breed requires a certain number of repetitions of a task to memorize. Border collies fall into the first group. They need less than five attempts to comprehend a command. Pekingese and Chow Chows, on the other hand, master the lesson after thirty attempts.

Dogs value images of objects

Researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute were exploring possible similarities between canine and human skills. Dogs, like humans, use symbols to represent things. The dogs were shown photographs of toys in a room and then asked to search for the object in the photograph. Before the test, the Mukhtars happily played with the toys used in the test.

Dogs value images of objects