Have you ever wished you could talk to your puppy?
American researchers suggest that this might be possible if you use one strange tool. The research project, published this week, came about after a flood of TikTok videos in which pet owners try to communicate with dogs using soundboards.
These carpet-like boards typically have a number of buttons linked to different commands—be it “play,” “outside” or “food”—and dogs tap on them to make a sound and get what they want. While you might assume this is just a silly trick, researchers have confirmed that pooches can actually understand the words on these boards in groundbreaking new results.
Associate Professor Federico Rossano of UC San Diego told Science Daily, “This study addresses public skepticism about whether dogs really understand what the buttons mean.
“Our findings are important because they show that words have meaning for dogs and that they respond to the words themselves, not just the cues associated with them.”
As part of the study, the researchers studied the dog’s behavior in two key experiments. In the first, researchers visited 30 pet homes across the United States to measure responses to soundboards, while in the second, pet owners monitored their dogs’ behavior remotely.
The results showed that the dogs produced “appropriate behavior” to both “play-related and extraneous” words, regardless of who or what was said. The study concludes: “Therefore, owners can successfully teach pet dogs to associate words recorded on soundboard buttons with their outcomes in the real world, and they will respond appropriately to these words even when presented without other cues, such as the owner’s body language.”
For Professor Rossano, this result is “just scratching the surface”, and in the future he wants to investigate in more detail what behavior among dogs is really possible. He added: “Our research highlights the importance of studying animals in their home environment, which provides a more ecologically valid understanding of their abilities.”
