Although it is one of the most conspicuous features of dog behavior, barking has received very little attention from animal behaviorists, ethologists or from an applied perspective. Emerging new research has indicated that in the repertoire of dog vocalizations barking has unique features by showing wide ranges of acoustic parameters like frequency, tonality and rhythmicity. According to the new experimental data, barking is strongly context dependent, and is informative at least for humans. At the same time, there are still only a few indications for intra-specific communication with barking in the dog.

We assume that dog barking emerged through selective processes in which human preference for certain acoustic aspects of the vocalization might have been of paramount importance. We call for a more experiment-oriented approach in the study of dog vocalization that could shed light on the possible communicative function of these acoustic signals.

Dogs, just like their wild relatives, have a rich vocal repertoire, including not only barking, but also other types of vocalizations. We have recently started to investigate the role of growls in dog-dog communication, especially in respect of the possible referential content of these signals. Referentiality means that a signal contains information about not only the signaller’s inner state, but some part of the outer environment too. Growls are suitable subjects for this kind of research, because dogs emit them in various social contexts, both in agonistic and non-agonistic situations. The acoustic communication of animals can be also interesting from the aspect of researching the unique features of human language. In a new series of playback experiments we use artificially constructed sequences of dog barks, for testing the sensitivity of dogs to particular language-features, like recursivity.

 

Further reading

Pongrácz, P., Miklósi, Á., Molnár, Cs., Csányi, V. 2005. Human listeners are able to classify dog barks recorded in different situations. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 119: 136-144. (pdf)

Pongrácz, P., Molnár, Cs., Miklósi, Á. 2006. Acoustic parameters of dog barks carry emotional information for humans. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 100: 228-240. (pdf)

Molnár, Cs., Pongrácz, P., Dóka, A., Miklósi, Á. 2006. Can humans discriminate between dogs on the base of the acoustic parameters of barks? Behavioural Processes, 73: 76-83. (pdf)

Molnár, Cs., Kaplan, F., Roy, P., Pachet, F., Pongrácz, P., Dóka, A., Miklósi, Á. 2008. Classification of dog barks: a machine learning approach. Animal Cognition, 11: 389–400. (pdf)

Maros, K., Pongrácz, P., Bárdos, Gy., Molnár, Cs., Faragó, T., Miklósi, Á. 2008. Dogs can discriminate barks from different situations. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 114: 159–167. (pdf)

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