Dogs are the ultimate companions to humans; they aid the disabled, protect our loved ones, comfort the troubled and listen to us with the ability to understand emotion.
According to the Telegraph, a new study has made a key discovery in how man's best friend listens to its master and comprehends what he or she is saying. Dogs are not just being obedient, but are processing what humans say and how they say it.
Victoria Ratcliffe, an associated professor at the University of Sussex School of Psychology, and her team published their work in the journal Current Biology. She said that dogs show humans when they are listening by turning their read right.
"Although we cannot say how much or in what way dogs understand information in speech from our study, we can say that dogs react to both verbal and speaker-related information and that these components appear to be processed in different areas of the dog's brain," Ratcliffe said in a press release.
Dogs' brains look a lot like humans' and they process the sounds they are familiar with in the left hemisphere. Since the brain hemispheres are opposite our body's left and right, turning right is a clear indicator that the animal is using the left side of its brain.
"The input from each ear is mainly transmitted to the opposite hemisphere of the brain," Ratcliffe said. "If one hemisphere is more specialized in processing certain information in the sound, then that information is perceived as coming from the opposite ear."
The study does not suggest that dogs are capable of understanding everything humans say to them, but, like a good friend, they are listening.
