They’re often described as ‘man’s best friend’, but a new study suggests that we should perhaps start calling dogs ‘woman’s best friend’ instead.
Research has revealed that dogs listen to women more than men.
A team from Eötvös Loránd University used fMRI scanners to analyse dogs’ brains while people were speaking around them.
They found that the pups showed greater brain sensitivity to speech directed at them – especially if spoken by women.
‘Dog brains’ increased sensitivity to dog-directed speech spoken by women specifically may be due to the fact that women more often speak to dogs with exaggerated prosody than men,’ said Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.
They’re often described as ‘man’s best friend’, but a new study suggests that we should perhaps start calling dogs ‘woman’s best friend’ instead (stock imgae)
In the study, the team use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of family dogs. During the scans, the dogs listened to recordings of dog-, infant-, and adult-directed speech from 12 women and 12 men
When we communicate with infants and dogs, we tend to speak in an exaggerated tone to grab their attention.
Previous research has revealed that infants’ brains are tuned to this speech style.
However, until now, scientists haven’t assessed whether dog brains are also sensitive to the way we speak to them.
‘Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it can help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a nonhuman species skilled at relying on different speech cues (e.g. follow verbal commands),’ said Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study.
In the study, the team use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of family dogs.
During the scans, the dogs listened to recordings of dog-, infant-, and adult-directed speech from 12 women and 12 men.
The results revealed that the dogs’ brains responded more to dog- and infant-directed speech than to adult-directed speech.
This effect was even more pronounced when the speaker was a woman.
According to the researchers, this suggests that dogs respond better to higher-pitched voices.
‘What makes this result particularly interesting is that in dogs, as opposed to infants, this sensitivity cannot be explained by either ancient responsiveness to conspecific signals or by intrauterine exposure to women’s voice,’ said Dr Gergely.
‘Remarkably, the voice tone patterns characterizing women’s dog-directed speech are not typically used in dog-dog communication.
‘Our results may thus serve evidence for a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication.’
