SOME DOGS CAN LEARN WORDS BY EAVESDROPPING, ACCORDING TO STUDY

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Some Dogs Can Learn Words by Eavesdropping, According to New Study

By Becca Longmire  Published on January 9, 2026 12:47PM EST

 

Some dogs have the ability to learn words by eavesdropping on their owners' interactions, similar to how a toddler would pick up on things from their parents, a new study has found.

 

Researchers made the discovery after working with a group of "Gifted Word Learner (GWL) Dogs," per a piece published by the journal Science on Thursday, Jan. 8. The study suggested that the group of pups pick up on certain words just like a 1.5-year-old toddler would.

 

An abstract read, "Children as young as 18 months can acquire novel words by overhearing third-party interactions," adding, "Demonstrating similar learning processes in nonhuman species would indicate that the social-cognitive skills supporting this process are not exclusively human but may have evolved, or can develop, in other species, offering valuable insights into the origins of language-related cognition."

 

"In this study, we demonstrated that a small group of Gifted Word Learner dogs, which possess an extensive vocabulary of object labels, can learn new labels by overhearing their owners’ interactions," it continued.

 

"Moreover, we show that these dogs can acquire novel object-label mappings even when the labels and objects are not presented simultaneously. Taken together, these results suggest that Gifted Word Learner dogs possess sociocognitive skills functionally parallel to those of 18-month-old children," the message shared.

 

Per a press release obtained by PEOPLE, the research team tested 10 of the dogs in two experiments. The first test saw owners introduce two new toys and repeatedly label them while interacting directly with the dog, before the dogs then passively watched as their owners spoke to another person about the toys, without addressing the dog at all, in a second situation.

 

"Overall, in each condition, the dogs heard the name of each new toy for a total of only eight minutes, distributed across several brief exposure sessions. To test whether the dogs had learned the new labels, the toys were placed in a different room, and the owners asked the dogs to retrieve each toy by name," the release noted, adding that "in both conditions, seven out of 10 dogs learned the new labels."

 

The study found that the "dog’s performance was very accurate already at the first trials of the test, with 80% correct choices in the addressed condition and 100% in the overhearing condition," per the release, which added that the findings mirrored those from infant studies.

 

A second experiment then saw owners first show the dogs the toys, before placing them inside a bucket, naming them only when they were out of the pups’ sight.

 

"This created a temporal separation between seeing the object and hearing its name. Despite this discontinuity, most of the Gifted dogs successfully learned the new labels," the release stated.

 

Lead scientist Dr. Shany Dror, from the University for Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, said, “Our findings show that the socio-cognitive processes enabling word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human,” adding, “Under the right conditions, some dogs present behaviors strikingly similar to those of young children,” per the release.

 

Dror added, “These dogs provide an exceptional model for exploring some of the cognitive abilities that enabled humans to develop language,” insisting, “But we do not suggest that all dogs learn in this way - far from it.”

 

The release noted that GWL dogs are "extremely rare" and "their remarkable abilities likely reflect a combination of individual predispositions and unique life experiences."