Dogs may appear to have selective hearing when it comes to commands but research suggests they are paying attention to human chit-chat. Curiously, the longer the dog’s head was, the better their brain could distinguish speech from non-speech. “This is also supported by the observation that older dogs show the stronger differentiation between the two languages,” said Andics. He said it made sense to explore response to human speech in dogs, since they shared our environment. “Almost everything that you can find about human speech and human language and you say, ‘ah this is unique to humans’, you find an animal somewhere that can do it.”

Source: The Guardian January 06, 2022 21:33 UTC