Chinwagging with man’s best friend

Dogs are obviously smarter than human beings; after all, they can understand us no matter what language we speak, but we can only guess what their barks, yelps and growls mean.

We don’t even know whether Labradorspeak is the same as Spanielspeak, Chihuahuaspeak and Streetdogspeak. So, it is heartening that an animal behaviour expert from Northern Arizona University who has spent 30 years studying how prairie dogs — which incidentally are not dogs at all but a rodent species — communicate, hopes to develop a “pet translator” in 10 years, using an artificial intelligence algorithm to decode the barks, growls and howls of man’s best friend.

But they should also crowdsource the experience of dog lovers when it comes to deciphering their pets’ “language” — allowing for individual variations on favourite phrases. Poochspeak could be a universal language for our planet, putting an end to linguistic chauvinisms and rivalries.


Turning woofs into words would certainly revolutionise the human-dog relationship; maybe humans can then finally bark back to their pets too, in a coherent way. But, unfortunately, canines would lose their ability to gossip about their humans without us finding out. Hopefully, cats, birds and other domesticated animals would be similarly disadvantaged by pet translators, otherwise dogs will be very miffed indeed.