Of course, no one wants to discuss Hamlet or the French election with the high-eared basset over there. But their owners’ lives would certainly be easier if their dogs, instead of barking and growling, could communicate in good Portuguese when they are thirsty, hungry or want to go for a walk.
It is good that science always has consolation. Researchers from Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University have found that, language barriers aside, people are actually pretty good at guessing the meaning of dog sounds.
In a laboratory test, 40 volunteers listened to 18 recordings of different dogs growling. And they were able to distinguish friendly sounds from aggressive ones in 63% of cases.
The recordings were made in different situations. In some, the animal was playing. In others, he has secured a bowl of food or found another strange and potentially dangerous dog.
Women were generally more sensitive to the content of growls; 65% of them always provided the puppy correctly, compared to 45% of men. As expected, the volunteers who already interacted with the animals on a daily basis fared better; 60% of them could tell what dogs were thinking, compared to 40% of those who didn’t have a human best friend at home.
Another interesting conclusion from the scientific article is that dogs can use their “voice” to give the impression that they are bigger than they really are, but they don’t always do this. When a small dog growled when it encountered another strange dog, participants were mostly able to guess the animal’s size using only their hearing. On the other hand, when defending the food bowl, the small animal manipulated the noise to appear larger than it actually is.