A new study by researchers at the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Hungary reveals that dogs can recognize their owners only by voice and for this they use some of the properties of the voice that we humans also use. The study has been published in AnimalCognition.
Of course our dogs recognize us but can they too if they can’t see or smell us, based only on our voices? The research group Family Dog Project has created a video in Spanish to demonstrate it.
Researchers from the ELTE Department of Ethology invited 28 pairs of dogs and owners to play hide-and-seek in the laboratory.
The dogs had to find their humans behind one of two available hiding spots. An unknown person was hiding behind the other. The researchers then played the voice of the dog’s owner, reading aloud and in a neutral tone, from the owner’s hiding place, and an unknown voice from the other hiding place.
The dogs had to find in the distance in which hiding place the owner was, and check it. The game consisted of several rounds in which the owner’s voice was paired with 14 unknown voicessome more similar to that of the owner and others less.
The dogs got it right 82% of the time.
To make sure that the dogs’ sense of smell didn’t help them choose, in the last two rounds the researchers played the owner’s voice from the unknown person’s hiding place. The dogs continued to choose the hiding place from which the voice of their loved one came, pointing out that they did not use their sense of smell on this occasion.
The researchers also explored what features of the voice influenced the dogs’ decisions. “People mostly we use three properties of the voice: tone (high or low), harmonicity (clean or hard) and timbre (light or dark) to differentiate others. Dogs may use the same properties or perhaps some different ones. If two voices differ in an important property for dogs, the decision should be easier for them”—explains Anna Gaborlead author of the study.
The time the dogs spent looking in their human’s direction while waiting for the signal to go was a sign of how sure they were of their decision. It turned out that if the owner’s voice and the stranger’s voice differed more in pitch and harmonicity the dogs had an easier time choosing, however, the timbre and other properties had no effect.
“This is the first proof that dogs can recognize the voice of their caregivers among many others. The study also shows that dogs use some, but only some, of the properties of the voice that we humans also use to recognize who is speaking.” Attila Andicsleader of the Neuroethology of Communication Lab, where this study was carried out, published on February 10, with the title Acoustic basis of human voice identity processing in dogs. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
