Prehistoric wolves had a vested interest in understanding humans ever since they collided in the garbage heap 14,000 years ago. Gradually wolves learned human communication, making themselves indispensable assets on human hunts — and partners in the bounty.
Wolves’ canine descendants aren’t too shabby in their receptive vocabulary of human language. Chaser, the border collie, understood more than 1,000 human words including nouns and verbs individually and in tandem. She could retrieve a host of specific objects and perform various tasks with them.
One study is now exploring the possibility that dogs have a far greater capacity for expressive “speech” than we ever imagined. Given a simplified communication board and training, some dogs are able to press programmed buttons to answer simple questions or to express their needs.
In June 2020, Leo Trottier, a product developer in the pet industry, and Dr. Frederico Rossano, a cognitive researcher at the University of California, San Diego, teamed up to launch They Can Talk, a research project and online forum for participants. Trottier had developed an alternative communication (AAC) device for dogs called FluentPet and was searching for beta testers. Rossano, who has studied the cognitive skills of several species, seized the opportunity to study dogs’ language-like abilities using formal methods.
More than 2,500 people and their canine companions are participating in the study which is being sponsored by FluentPet. Buying the product is not required, though the company offers incentives. To avoid a conflict of interest, Rossano is not being paid for his work.
“I am a scientist and as far as I am concerned, my job is to assess whether these devices are revealing cognitive abilities that are novel and unexpected or whether this can all be explained through simple learning mechanisms common across several animal species,” Rossano told the New York Times.
Recent studies illuminate canine understanding of human language. In 2017, Gregory Berns, professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University, led a project that trained dogs to walk into an fMRI scanner without sedation or restraint. Pet parents spoke the names of toys and other familiar objects to their animals interspersed with gibberish. The scans showed that dogs quickly discerned real from non-real words that were phonemically distinct. A 2016 study by the Family Dog Project in Hungary published in Scientific American suggests that it’s not just what we say but how we say it that’s important to our canine companions.
Many posit that dogs possess a nuanced social understanding of humans’ social cues as a result of domestication. Recent findings showed that dogs developed facial muscles in response to humans’ positive reactions to especially “cute” facial expressions. “Puppy-dog” eyes with raised eyebrows is one example. Domestication may have given dogs a heightened predisposition to acquiring human language.
The FluentPet project is the first formal study of canine language acquisition through the use of an assistive device. The study was preceded by individual efforts to translate canine wants and needs into human speech.
Christina Hunger, a speech pathologist specializing in AAC, documented the expressive vocabulary of her own dog, Stella, on social media. Inspired by Stella’s achievements, artist and jewelry designer, Alexis Devine, created her own custom communication board for her pup, Bunny.
Stella and Bunny are true Dog Vloggers. They do their own talking — with a little help from their humans.