C’est l’histoire d’un border collie, parmi les chiens réputés les plus intelligents, qui a inspiré les chercheurs dans de nouveaux travaux. Selon eux, nos meilleurs amis sont capables, comme nous, de distinguer une langue étrangère de leur langue « maternelle ». Décidément, pas si bêtes, les chiens ! © Kate, Adobe Stock

Your dog won’t speak…like a Spanish cow!

The House of Science is like a collection of stories. Beautiful tales told to live in all their freshness. But also in all its complexities. Arch to marvel at the treasures of the world. In this new episode, let’s go back again to our best friend: the dog.

Our best friend, the dog, is already mentioned several times in this “Monsters of Science” column. We discovered that he is able to share our feelings. the happiest. like melancholy. Or we put our paws on our little mistakes. in a expose our lies for example. Recently, we got to know Max, Jaya Or even a storm. to real little geniuses Who learned to distinguish things by name.

And a few days ago, I came across a new business – it’s still being done by the famous teamBehavioral scientists from Eötvös University Lorand From Budapest (Hungary) – which caught the attention of dog lovers. Our best friend is able to distinguish between languages, the researchers said. Unbelievable, do you think? you are absolutely right. Because it seems that very few animals are capable of such a feat. It has already been proven in African elephants. But this is known. Elephants are especially smart. Today is the first time that this ability has been demonstrated brain Not human.

First, you might want to know how the hell the researchers thought about testing this on dogs. chance again. An ethicist moves with her from Mexico to Hungary dog. And who, at the bend of the plane, wonders how the universe of believers will react to all those people who will not speak the same language as hers. Human children make a difference. But dogs?

Spanish has nothing to do with Hungarian!

So researchers at Eötvös Lorànd University in Budapest (Hungary), as they now used to, trained dogs to stand still in the scanner. There they showed them extracts from The Little Prince. Good Choice! In Spanish and Hungarian. Dogs that never hear more than one or more of these languages. And while they are, the researchers also tested these dogs’ ability to distinguish between real text and a scrambled, meaningless version.

The pictures are unmistakable. Forms of separate activities appear in a file Dandruff Dogs’ primary auditory hearing is when they hear a coherent text or text…without a tail or head. The researchers say that this ability could be linked to a type of detector hidden in the brains of the character’s dogs. “natural” or not a sentence.

Language-specific activity patterns are found in the secondary auditory cortex. Patterns are more pronounced in older dogs. These forms will be a sign that for our part, dogs can learn the auditory regularity of our language. Then distinguish it from a foreign language. Possibly as a result of evolution dog brain For thousands of years it has been frequented by men. Or no… Anyway, it seems that once again, we’ve been led to the conclusion that our canine friend isn’t stupid!

Not that stupid and sensitive. So for those of you who are interested in how Kun-kun manages to adapt to those people who speak a language he doesn’t understand, rest assured! The love of his human being is more than enough for him. Now that he’s figured out what snow is, it might help our behavioral science friends at Eötvös Lorànd University to learn more about the way dogs perceive speech…

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