Dogs decode speech the same way human babies do, with a 'consonant bias', Hungarian scientists find

From the Newshound archive · first published 25 September 2026 · last updated 26 September 2026.

Hungarian researchers have discovered that dogs process spoken language much as humans do, relying on consonant sounds to tell words apart — a capacity scientists had until now believed belonged exclusively to our species. Published in the journal Science, the study used EEG recordings taken from 20 dogs and 20 humans, all of whom heard sequences of nonsense words played to them. No other animal had previously been shown to grasp language in this way.

Attila Andics of Budapest's Eotvos Lorand University said consonants 'form the skeleton of words' and both humans and dogs rely on them from infancy.

When consonants were repeated, the dogs' brain activity locked onto word rhythms in a pattern matching the human response; that synchronisation broke down, however, when vowel patterns dominated instead.

Doctoral researcher Kinga Toth said dog brains 'successfully synchronised with the rhythm of the words' in the same way human brains do.