Why Dogs Secretly Love When You Talk To Them Like A Baby, According To Research
Nikola Stojadinovic | Canva If you were making a list of the most adorable things in the world, chances are good that at the top of that list is going to be the word "PUPPIES" written in bubble letters with little stars and hearts around it.
Everything about baby animals is cute, and puppies and kittens are only some of the most wonderful balls of fluff there are. No one can deny looking into a sleepy puppy's face and getting a little kiss. So what could be cuter than the idea of puppies? Well, what if I told you that puppies (and other animals, apparently!) absolutely adore it when you speak to them in baby talk?
Why dogs secretly love when you talk to them like a baby, according to research
Kazantseva Olga | Shutterstock
Yes, it's true: In some of the cutest news you will ever hear in your entire life, it turns out that puppies actually really love it when humans speak to them like they're infant humans.
If your voice has reached dog-whistle levels in pitch, and you've just been asking them the same question over and over again (it's Who's a good boy? ... it's always that), then they're secretly loving every second of it, and those tail wags are for you.
While infant children kind of run the market on things that most people speak "baby talk" to (since we have a natural inclination to speak in a higher-pitched voice and repeat what we're saying a lot, says Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D), it actually does help them. In fact, it can help babies learn and absorb words more easily since we're dumbing down our speech and incidentally letting them learn the patterns.
For puppies, it's much the same. Studies have found that while older dogs responded equally well to both higher-pitched and normal-pitched voices (because they actually just want you to be quiet), puppies were far more likely to respond to the people who baby-talked to them.
And while scientists may not yet have concluded why this might be the case, they have deduced one thing:
Speaking to dogs in a high-pitched, repetitive manner promotes word learning
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Basically, we're inclined to speak to dogs this way because our brains put them in a "nonverbal companion" category, which means it's a being that can maybe only sort of understand what we're actually saying.
As a result, puppies often get the baby talk treatment, and this is good because we're doing to the puppies exactly what we're doing to the babies: teaching them to recognize the words we're saying.
So, as annoying as baby talk is to anyone who isn't holding the puppy, it does actually serve a purpose, and both children and puppies alike are pretty dang fond of it.
Just remember, next time you see a puppy, and you immediately squeal with delight and start baby-talking, he's actually loving the entire experience.
And if you see him enough and baby talk to him enough, one of the times that you ask him, "Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?" for the thousandth time, he might just respond with a lick and a little tail wag because, thanks to you, he figured out that he's actually the good boy you're talking about.
Merethe Najjar is a professional writer, editor, and award-winning fiction author from Atlanta, Georgia. She has had multiple publications featured in The Aviator Magazine, Infinite Press, Yahoo, BRIDES, and others.
