Dogs’ brains are sensitive to the familiar high-pitched “cute” voice tone that adult humans, especially women, use to talk to babies, according to a new study.
The research, published recently in the journal Communications Biology, found “exciting similarities” between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with such a high-pitched tone feature.
Humans tend to speak with a specific speech style characterised by exaggerated prosody, or patterns of stress and intonation in a language, when communicating with individuals having limited language competence.
Such speech has previously been found to be very important for the healthy cognitive, social and language development of children, who are also tuned to such a high-pitched voice.
But researchers, including those from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, hoped to assess whether dog brains are also sensitive to this way of communication.
In the study, conscious family dogs were made to listen to dog, infant and adult-directed speech recorded from 12 women and men in real-life interactions.
As the dogs listened, their brain activities were measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan.
The study found the sound-processing regions of the dogs’ brains responded more to dog- and infant-directed than adult-directed speech.
This marked the first neurological evidence that dog brains are tuned to speech directed specifically at them.
“Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it can help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a nonhuman species skilled at relying on different speech cues,” explained Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study.
Scientists also found dog- and infant-directed speech sensitivity of dog brains was more pronounced when the speakers were women, and was affected by voice pitch and its variation.
These findings suggest the way we speak to dogs matters, and that their brain is specifically sensitive to the higher-pitched voice tone typical to the female voice.
“Remarkably, the voice tone patterns characterizing women’s dog-directed speech are not typically used in dog-dog communication – our results may thus serve evidence for a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication,” said Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.
“Dog brains’ increased sensitivity to dog-directed speech spoken by women specifically may be due to the fact that women more often speak to dogs with exaggerated prosody than men,” Dr Gabor said.
Police smash car window to save dog from 115F heat
Police were forced to smash a car window to rescue a dog from scorching 115F (46C) temperatures in Sarasota, Florida.
Officers were called to a car park on University Parkway on Tuesday following reports of a dog locked inside a car.
A dog, appearing faint, was found inside with no trace of its owner. According to police, the temperature inside was 115F (46C).
Matthew Grochowski, an officer for the Sarasota Police Department, was filmed smashing the window of the car in body camera footage of the incident, shared to Facebook on Friday.
“It’s panting and and drooling all over the place”, the officer says in the footage.
“Oh my god he’s starting to go down, that’s not good,” another officer, from the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office Animal Services, adds.
With the backing of Sgt Louis Buck, the officer was filmed striking a back window of the car, and smashed it on the third try, with glass falling to the floor.
“It’s OK buddy,” the officer tells the dog, which appeared to be a form of pit bull. “Come on, good boy.”
The dog was taken from the back of the car, and into an awaiting kennel by Sarasota animal services.
Following the incident, the Sarasota Police Department issued a warning for dog owners not to lock animals inside cars.
“Please don’t leave pets in hot cars,” said the post, “[and] always remember to look before you lock for pets, children and elderly loved ones.”
The owner of the dog was issued with two citations by Animal Services, who returned the dog.
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