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Do YOU talk to your pug? I don’t know too many pug owners that don’t.
Nicholas Epley, who is a behavioral science professor at the University of Chicago, helped with a recent study and found out that talking to our pets is one of the ways we try to anthropomorphize them (which means to try to make our pets more like us). In fact, talking to our animals is a sign of intelligence and that goes for talking to inanimate things like cars or plants too.
“Historically, anthropomorphizing (giving humanlike tendencies to inanimate objects and animals) has been treated as a sign of childishness or stupidity, but it’s actually a natural byproduct of the tendency that makes humans uniquely smart on this planet,” Epley said. “No other species has this tendency and according to Epley, we do it more than we even realize.
*Recognizing the mind of another human being involves the same psychological processes
as recognizing a mind in other animals, a god, or even a gadget.
*It is a reflection of our brain’s greatest ability rather than a sign of our stupidity.
https://www.indy100.com/article/talking-pets-more-intelligent-dog-cat-objects-7666431
Dr. Alexandra Horowitz from the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College discovered that the things we say have certain patterns. For her research, she walked around a city and just listened as people talked to their dogs. She found that a lot of people talk to their dogs simply because they really want to talk to other people. She found that people’s dogs act as intermediaries who people use to strike up conversations with other people. When people talk to their dogs, it’s easier for them to talk to another person. Dr. Horowitz says that her study showed that we when speak to our dogs, sometimes what we are actually trying to do is speak to the people around us.
https://www.tesh.com/articles/do-you-talk-to-your-dog/
Do our dogs understand what we say? Yes, according to research. Anthropomorphism doesn’t just make you smarter- it also makes our pets smarter. When we talk to our pets, they learn how to differentiate between our words and our gestures. They DO understand the words we say to them after we repeat them enough and they also associate emotions that go with certain words.
DID YOU KNOW?? Dogs can also hear sounds (like us talking) from further away. Humans can hear sounds from 20 feet away but our dogs can hear us talking from 80 feet away.
https://www.elitedaily.com/news/people-who-talk-to-their-pets-smart/1849322
Keep talking to your pets… it just means your brilliant!!
Until next time,
Hugs and Pug Kisses,
Candy
