I'm guilty, as are millions of others, of talking to their dog like a child. But I never really thought about whether or not he understood what I was saying. Well, science may have recently discovered that...he probably does.

A team of scientists from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest used functional magnetic resonance imaging to discover how dogs process both language and intonation, and found it's not dissimilar to how humans do.

They tried speaking praise in both a neutral and praising tone, and neutral words in both a neutral and praising tone. The fMRI data revealed that dogs do actually process vocabulary and can recognise individual words using the left hemisphere of the brain, the same as humans. The team also monitored the brain's reward centre, and found that the dogs responded best to praise words in a praising tone.

The scientists discovered that not only can dogs tell the difference in tones, but they also recognize words and are able to associate them with either positive or negative vocabulary.

Something to think about next time you insult your dog in a sweet voice.....he knows you're bullshitting.

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