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THE canine phrase book has collected its first entries. Dogs understand the meaning of different growls, from a rumble that says “back off” to playful snarls made in a tug-of-war game.
Proving that animal vocalisations have specific meanings – and what they could be – is challenging. In 2008, Péter Pongrácz, a behavioural biologist at Eötvös Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, monitored dogs’ heart rates to show that they seem to notice a difference between barks aimed at strangers and those directed at nothing in particular. Now…
