Computer Decodes Dog Communication

Jan. 17, 2008 — -- Barking dogs might be better communicators than we thought, according to a new study.

Computer software can distinguish individual dogs by their barks, and also suggests that certain barks act as a "universal language", carrying information about the dog's mind-set that is readily understood by their fellow pooches.

Csaba Molnár and his colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, recorded 14 Hungarian sheepdogs barking in a range of situations: when approached by a stranger, during play, during a fight, and when the dog was alone.

Then they fed the sound recordings into an artificial neural network developed by a team led by Frédéric Kaplan at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

The artificial neural network identified key audio features of each bark and Molnár's team found that the computer software could identify the situation in which a bark was recorded.

The accuracy of the software varied, however – while it correctly identified a dog barking at a stranger in 63% of cases, it correctly identified a bark recorded during play just 6 percent of the time.

The software also varied in its ability to identify individual dogs, depending on the context in which the bark was recorded.

When played samples of dogs barking during play, the software could correctly identify individuals 60 percent of the time, but it struggled to distinguish between different dogs barking at a stranger -- it could do this only 30 percent of the time.

The results show that dog barks carry a wealth of information, says Molnár. "In the past, scientists thought that dog barks originated as a by-product of domestication and so have no communicative role," he says. "But we have shown there are contextual differences."

Molnár thinks that selection by humans could explain why an artificial neural network is better at recognising that a dog is fighting than playing. Domestic dogs have always been used for their vigilance, and so it may be important for humans to quickly identify when a dog is barking at a stranger.