Many dogs can understand some simple instructions given to them by their owners, such as "sitting", "up" and "turning over". But people always think that if we speak foreign languages, dogs will think we are talking nonsense.
But now, a new study shows that they can actually distinguish language differences. This is the first time that scientists have proven that other animals also have the ability to distinguish language, and dogs may be more developed than we think.
Brain scientists from Eotvos Roland University in Hungary played Spanish and Hungarian versions of " Little Prince " (a fairy tale), and an inverted version of this story (sounds confusing).
While listening to the story, scientists used MRI to scan the brain of pet dogs. They found that as long as the sound stimulation is a sound, their primary auditory cortex has a unique pattern of activity, regardless of whether the dog is familiar with it. This shows that dogs are able to distinguish between verbal and nonverbal sounds.
Not only that, when dogs hear unfamiliar language, a more complex brain area, the secondary auditory cortex, will be more active. This shows that they can also distinguish different languages. In this experiment, at least, the dog's brain activity proved that they were able to differentiate between Spanish and Hungarian.
A more interesting discovery is that the older the dog, the stronger their ability to distinguish language. Scientists believe that this may be because pet dogs have lived with humans for a long time and they have gradually become familiar with the pronunciation rules of human language.
This discovery shows that the ability to master language rules is not unique to humans. However, scientists still don't know whether this is a dog's specialty or the shared ability of other animal species. This is the next question they will study.
(excerpted from the popular science magazine "Singularity Science" 2023 magazine subscription https://www.zazhipu.com/)
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