All Ears: New Study Reveals Dogs’ Remarkable Ability to Listen to Human Speech

The group’s research paper, Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) recognise meaningful content in monotonous streams of read speech), explains that dogs actually ‘listen in’ when we are speaking, even if the speech is not directed at them. According to the findings, dogs possess the neurological capacity to passively sift through information and commands relevant to them when humans are talking.

Humans and dogs have lived symbiotically for over 14,000 years, yet despite our mutualistic bond, there remains a poor understanding of whether dogs do understand what we say.

The group investigated whether dogs can spontaneously identify meaningful content in a stream of irrelevant speech that is spoken in a monotone voice.

A mixed group of dogs from a variety of breeds were recruited for the exercise and were each exposed to a stream of speech which contained both relevant commands and irrelevant information, all spoken in a flat tone. Surprisingly, the dogs consistently responded to the commands, demonstrating their ability to extract meaningful verbal content from what was spoken.

Typically, when addressing our canine companions, we deliver commands in isolation with exaggerated intonation – known as dog-directed speech (DDS), which provide vocal cues to the animal to pay attention. This DDS closely resembles the “baby talk”, or infant-directed speech, used with young children.

The implications of these findings have an expansive reach in the field of human-animal interactions and highlight that dogs are equipped with the neural architecture to support speech recognition, that could be advantageous when training service dogs.

Dr Holly Root-Gutteridge, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Lincoln, commented: “Dogs understand that we say their name to get their attention, and this is almost always paired with a happy ‘baby talk’ speech register because dogs prefer it. We wanted to see if dogs were only responding to this happy voice or if they could recognise their name, even when it was buried in a sentence and delivered in a flat voice.

“We found that dogs could absolutely find their name when presented in a monotone way and buried in stream of irrelevant speech – a prerequisite for comprehending language – and shows how good they are at listening to us. We also discovered that they gave those familiar words about the same degree of attention as the meaningless words spoken in the DDS ‘happy voice’, but less than if we paired up their name and the DDS voice.

“So, this means that they’re listening to us all the time and can pick out their name, but they will pay more attention if you give them both cues. So, “Sheba, come on then” gets more attention from her if you sound eager to see her.”

Project leader, Professor David Reby at the University of Saint Etienne and Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex where the research was initiated, said: “We show that dogs can recognise speech information relevant to them in the absence of the usual prosody we use when we address them.

“The fact that basic verbal information can be perceived by a species that does not speak either indicates that human speech exploits perceptual abilities present in other mammals, or that dogs have a special ear for human speech as a consequence of domestication.”

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Research Sciences Council.

The paper is available to read online: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-025-01948-z.