Do dogs know what we’re saying?

A man giving a command to a Jack Russell terrier. Several studies have shown that dogs can distinguish between real words and nonsense words. Photo: 123rf.com

Dog lovers will tell you that their dogs know their names and understand a whole lot more besides. However, many people don’t believe that’s true. Animals, they say, lack our awareness.Clever experiments suggest the argument has been settled.

In 2004 scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig reported in the journal Science that a border collie called Rico had learned to fetch more than 200 objects by name.