Scientists at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, led by ethologist Claudia Fugazza, published in the journal Science in January 2026 the results of a sensational study. It turned out that a small group of exceptionally gifted dogs that took part in the experiment can remember the names of new objects simply by eavesdropping on their owners' conversations — just as young children do at the age of 18–23 months. The experiments involved 20 border collies: 10 of them belonged to the rare group of so-called "gifted word learners," capable of remembering the names of hundreds of objects, while the rest formed a control group. The lead author of the study, Dr. Shany Dror, noted that this is the first time that dogs' ability to learn words by eavesdropping on human interaction has been scientifically documented.
The experiment was carefully designed. Owners held new toys — such as a stingray or an armadillo — and discussed them with an assistant, completely ignoring the dog's presence: they did not look at the animal or address it. After that, the dog was sent to an adjacent room, where among familiar toys there were new objects, and was asked to fetch the one it had heard about. The results astonished the scientists: gifted dogs chose the correct object with an accuracy of about 80–90 percent — almost as well as with direct training.
To rule out a simple association between the word and the visible object, the researchers made the task more difficult. The toy was hidden in an opaque container, and the name of the object was spoken only when the dog could no longer see it. Despite this gap between perception and labeling, gifted dogs continued to find the right item without error. This indicates that they perceive language abstractly, without linking it to a visible object — a mechanism that was considered the prerogative of humans and, possibly, great apes.
Until recently, it was assumed that complex social learning through eavesdropping was unique to human children, parrots, and primates. Now it turns out that dogs — at least some of them — possess the same cognitive abilities. Dror emphasized that this discovery expands our understanding of how social-cognitive mechanisms evolved and how animals perceive human speech. "Our results show that the social-cognitive processes that allow learning a word from overheard speech are not uniquely human," the researcher noted.
However, it is important to emphasize: this rare ability is developed only in a small proportion of dogs, mainly in certain breeds such as border collies and some corgis. Ordinary dogs do not possess such skills, and this confirms that social learning through eavesdropping remains an exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, the discovery shows that dogs, having lived alongside humans for thousands of years, have developed remarkable abilities for language perception and social communication.
The study also has practical implications. It demonstrates that enriching the speech environment around a pet — ordinary conversations in the dog's presence — can contribute to the development of its language skills if it is endowed with the necessary cognitive abilities. At the same time, the results prompt scientists to further investigate the neurobiological mechanisms that allow these unique animals to extract meaning from human speech based on observation.
