Talk with the Animals

Humans and canines may share a common method of communication according to a new Applied Animal Behavior Science study conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Budapest. The group studied how well people with varying amounts of dog experience could accurately describe the emotional content of a dog's bark. The barks represented five emotional states: fear, aggressiveness, despair, playfulness and happiness.

Peter Pongracz, the team's leader, discerned that even people with relatively no canine experience could accurately identify a dog's emotional state based on his barking patterns alone. Pongracz suggests that most mammals communicate on the same acoustic level and therefore have the ability to understand one another.

Emotions are expressed in varying degrees of pitch, tone and frequency; lower pitches denoting aggression and higher pitches denoting submission. Pongracz offers an explanation and states, "This relationship could have formed the basis of an evolutionary ritualization process whereby low pitched vocalizations tended to signal aggression because larger animals are more likely to win contests...and high pitched vocalizations became predictors of submission or friendly intent."

Photo thanks to Animal Planet