Your Dog Might Be Learning Words When You’re Not Even Talking to Them

Spelling out W-A-L-K to avoid setting off your dog has become a rite of passage for pet owners. But for a small group of unusually gifted dogs, even that might not work. Researchers in Hungary have found that some dogs can pick up new words simply by listening to their owners talk to someone else. The study, published in Science, tested ten dogs that already knew the names of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of toys. These animals don’t learn through formal training. They absorb vocabulary during...