Question: how do some animals understand human language?

Kevin Mahon answered on 12 Jun 2012:

It varies with the animals – A lot of parrots for example are just mimicking noises they hear as opposed to specifically understanding language. Likewise many animals that are trained to do tricks are unlikely to understand the command (roll over, jump etc) as language – it’s more likely the case that they have come to understand that when they hear this noise and do the right trick, they’ll get a treat.

There are however some pretty astounding examples of animals comprehending human speech, most notably with higher apes that have been trained to use sign language like gestures. By gesturing, many researchers have reported apes describing how they are feeling etc. Many researchers don’t like using the term ‘language’ to desrcibe this however, as it doesn’t have much structure, or things like grammar! Apes are likely to be able to gesture like this because of their high brain power, but also importantly, their prehensile (ability to grasp) hands!

What some animals can do hwoever, is read our emotions very well. Dogs are remarkably good at reading human emotions. Though the research is limited, we know that dogs look very closely at human facial features to read emotion. So it may not be the case that when you say ‘no!’ to a dog that it understands what you say – it’ll likely be they’ve looked at your emotional state and responded to that! bottom line is that many animals can understand us – whether or not its our language.