There’s good news for people who like to think of their dogs as their children. A new study suggests that dogs may indeed be similar to an 18-month-old child in one fascinating way — they can pick up on words relevant to them, just like a toddler would. The research suggests that dogs have the neurological capacity to eavesdrop and learn new words when they hear humans talking about something that interests them. Apparently, dogs possess an extensive vocabulary of object labels and can learn new ones by overhearing hearing them repeatedly. The studied showed they can learn the name of a new toy, even when it was hidden in a bucket, as long as their owner is looking toward the spot where it’s hidden. One dog in the study, a 7-year-old female border collie named Basket, knew the names of over 200 dog toys. "So it’s not just fetch and good boy your dog is responding to," said Shany Dror, a cognitive scientist at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Dogs are highly sensitive to human cues and, because they are social, they often pay close attention to what their owners say.
