Uniquely gifted dogs teach themselves vocabulary just by eavesdropping on their owners' conversations

Most dog owners have learned to spell certain words around their pets. "Want to go to the P-A-R-K?" becomes code when you need to avoid triggering an excited frenzy.

Now, research suggests this caution may be warranted for reasons beyond simple conditioning. A small group of exceptionally intelligent dogs can learn new words simply by listening to their owners' conversations, acquiring vocabulary the same way human toddlers do.

A study published in the journal Science reveals that these "Gifted Word Learner" dogs demonstrate cognitive abilities functionally parallel to those of 18-month-old children.

The research, conducted by scientists at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, tested 10 dogs that had already demonstrated the ability to learn toy names. The results showed that seven of these dogs could learn new object labels simply by overhearing conversations between their owners and another person, without any direct training or interaction.

The findings challenge previous assumptions about the uniqueness of human language acquisition. While most dogs excel at learning action commands like "sit" and "stay," these gifted word learners can develop extensive vocabularies of object names, sometimes learning hundreds of toys through natural play and conversation.

How the research tested canine comprehension

The study's methodology mirrored approaches used to understand language learning in young children. Researchers tested the 10 dogs in two distinct scenarios.

In the first, owners introduced two new toys and repeatedly labeled them while directly interacting with their pets. In the second scenario, the dogs passively observed as their owners talked to another person about the same toys, without addressing the dog at all.

In both conditions, the dogs heard each new toy's name for a total of only eight minutes, spread across several brief exposure sessions. To test whether the dogs had learned the labels, the toys were placed in a different room and owners asked their pets to retrieve each item by name.

The results were striking. In the directly addressed condition, seven out of 10 dogs learned the new labels, with 80% correct choices in their first test trials. In the eavesdropping condition, the same seven dogs succeeded, but with perfect accuracy, correctly identifying the toys 100% of the time on their first attempts.

Even when researchers made the task more challenging by hiding the toys in a bucket so the dogs could no longer see them while hearing the labels, most dogs still successfully learned and retained the new words, remembering them even two weeks later.

The rarity of gifted word learners

These exceptional abilities remain extremely rare among dogs. Scientists currently know of only about 50 such animals worldwide.

According to lead researcher Shany Dror, a cognitive scientist at Eötvös Loránd University and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, while Border Collies are overrepresented among gifted word learners, the ability appears across various breeds including German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, Miniature Australian Shepherds, and even smaller breeds like Shih Tzus and Pekingese.

One standout participant in the study was Basket, a seven-year-old female Border Collie who knows the names of over 200 dog toys. Another dog in the research program, a Border Collie named Chaser who has since passed away, famously learned over 1,000 object names.

These dogs can reportedly learn new toy names after hearing them only four times and can master at least 12 new toys in a single week, retaining these labels for years.

Dror notes that the remarkable abilities of gifted word learners likely reflect a combination of individual predispositions and unique life experiences. The exact factors that enable this capacity remain unclear, making these dogs valuable subjects for understanding the cognitive foundations of language learning across species.

Broader implications for language evolution

The discovery that some dogs possess language-learning abilities parallel to those of human toddlers offers fresh insights into how communication skills may have evolved or developed across species. Similar eavesdropping abilities have been documented in bonobos and possibly African grey parrots, though the parrot's achievement also involved some direct teaching.

Dror explained that these findings are particularly significant because they demonstrate that the socio-cognitive processes enabling word learning from overheard speech are not uniquely human.

The ability requires a range of sophisticated social skills including following others' gaze and attentional state, taking another's perspective, and monitoring conversations, all capabilities that appear to exist in gifted word learner dogs.

The research also suggests that dogs' long history of coevolution with humans may have provided evolutionary advantages for those capable of understanding human verbal interactions. Given that dogs developed within the human ecological niche over thousands of years, their ability to tune into human communication makes biological sense. A separate 2025 study found that even typical family dogs can recognize command words in speech not directly addressed to them, indicating that basic eavesdropping abilities may be more widespread than the advanced object-label learning seen in gifted individuals.

For the vast majority of dogs, however, this level of linguistic sophistication remains out of reach. While your pet may pick up on emotional tones and respond to familiar commands, they are probably not building a secret vocabulary from dinner table conversations. Still, the existence of gifted word learners provides researchers with a unique window into the cognitive abilities that made human language possible in the first place.

Dog owners who believe their pets know the names of at least five different objects can contact the research team through the Genius Dog Challenge project, helping scientists better understand what makes these exceptional animals tick. Just be prepared, as Dror notes, that research sessions with enthusiastic canine subjects sometimes end with someone peeing on the couch.