HOW MANY WORDS UNDERSTAND DOGS?

The owners of dogs often and with pleasure spread on the subject, how clever their pets are. Everyone who has a four-legged friend is sure that he understands the speech addressed to him. How many words can a dog recognize? Of course, most dogs understand the commands to “sit”, “stand” or “come to me”, but if you wish, the animal can be taught to distinguish about 100 words. Neuropsychologist Stanley Korin, known for research in the field of mental activity of dogs, argues that a specially trained animal can memorize 160 words, and especially capable specimens even have no less lexical reserve than a 3-year-old child. Since the 70s of the last century, when scientists successfully began to teach sign language to chimpanzees, it became known that the language as a means of communication is not only accessible to people. Animals can, within certain limits, understand the speech addressed to them and communicate using their own means. A striking example is considered a border collie named Rico. The dog learned more than 200 words, which was confirmed by the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, located in Leipzig. They became interested in the dog after the owners reported such outstanding abilities.
During the first series of tests, the researchers wanted to find out if Rico really had such an extensive vocabulary. They selected 10 items whose names were known to Rico and placed them in the same room. At the command of the host, Rico entered the room and brought the named object, and so rarely was mistaken that the researchers decided to complicate the task. At the second stage, a new subject was placed among familiar things. When the owner said the name of an unfamiliar thing, Rico realized that it was necessary to bring it. The test was repeated several times, and Rico coped with the task in 70% of cases. Consequently, the dog not only remembered 200 words, but also used the principle of exclusion. At the final stage, the scientists set themselves the task of determining how long the dog remembered the new words. They took a break, after which they placed in one room the object whose name Rico had learned a month ago, as well as 4 acquaintances to him and 4 completely unfamiliar things. By order of the owner, the dog brought the thing, the name of which he learned 30 days ago, and coped with the task in 50% of cases. Of course, it cannot be argued that dogs are able to fully understand human speech. In view of the peculiarities of thinking, they clearly cannot understand words denoting abstract concepts, because only concrete things are available to them. In addition, when interacting with a man, dogs largely derive information from his intonations, gestures and poses, but nevertheless it cannot be denied that four-legged friends have an amazing ability to understand their owners.