There is an article in the recent edition of the journal Science reporting that dogs can understand human language.

Excerpts from the article:

“(Rico) lives as a pet with his owners and was reported by them to know the labels of more than 200 items, mostly children’s toys and balls, which he correctly retrieved upon request,” Julia Fischer of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and colleagues wrote.

When they put a new object into a room filled with old objects, Rico was able to fetch it 7 out of 10 times, evidently figuring out that the new word must refer to the new object.

Four weeks later, he apparently remembered this new word about half the time. “This retrieval rate is comparable to the performance of 3-year-old toddlers,” [the owners] wrote.

Very smart dog, good training, or is there something to this? You decide…

You have to sign up to read the article on the website of Science, but you can read more about it on Wired.com instead: Wired News: Dogs Understand Human Language