Babies Understand Dog Barks

If you pride yourself on being able to interpret your pup's every whine and whimper, you might be disappointed to learn the cold, hard truth: Decoding different dog barks is little more than child's play, according to U.S. News & World Report. Researchers at Brigham Young University report that babies can understand the meanings of different dog barks well before they say their first word.

BYU psychology researchers showed six-month-old babies two photos of the same dog. In one shot, the dog had a playful, friendly stance, in the other, the dog assumed an aggressive pose. Then the researchers played sound clips of friendly-sounding dog barks and aggressive-sounding snarls.

The brainy babies spent most of their time looking at the friendly dog while listening to the welcoming yaps, and they stared at the mean-looking mutt while listening to the threatening snarls. Even babies who had never been around dogs before successfully matched the sound to the correct photo. The findings are reported in the journal Developmental Psychology.

"Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world," BYU psychology professor Ross Flom said in a BYU press release. And now, evidence indicates those emotional signals aren't limited to humans. But if babies can understand dogs, count us doubly disappointed that six-month-olds can't talk. If only our babies could translate, maybe they could tell us why Rover keeps chewing on the remote?

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Tags: babies, bark, communicate, dogs, psychology