ue entonces cuando apareció el zorro …

Dogs can distinguish between foreign languages – or anyway, their brains respond differently when exposed to different tongues. Researchers in Budapest put 18 dogs through their paces with the study published in the journal NeuroImage.

Their methodology was as interesting as the results. Take 18 dogs, evenly split between males and females (five golden retrievers, six border collies, two Australian shepherds, one labradoodle, one cocker spaniel, and three mixed breeds, but sadly for this household, no beagle). Train the dogs to sit (Good dog!) in an MRI machine. Enlist native speakers of Spanish and Hungarian to read chapter 21 of “The Little Prince” to the dogs in each language (as a control, they also listened to a scrambled version of both languages). Watch what happens in their brains.

Chapter 21 begins, “It was then that the fox appeared … ." (Most of the dogs had been raised hearing Hungarian, while two had grown up around Spanish speakers.) So the dogs were asked to compare “Fue entonces cuando apareció el zorro … .” with “Ekkor jelent meg a róka … .”

Their brains lit up in two different ways when they listened to the chapter, depending on whether the language was native to the dog. But there were no significant differences detected in brain activity when they heard the scrambled version.

This showed for the first that “a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages,” according to Attila Andics, senior author of the study. “It is exciting, because it reveals that the capacity to learn about the regularities of a language is not uniquely human. Still, we do not know whether this capacity is dogs’ specialty, or general among non-human species.”

[Full disclosure: Daisy Mae is fluent in English, German, and Beaglese.]

Photo credit: Laura V. Cuaya via Twitter