There are two immediate flaws I see with the study. The first is the sound quality of the youtube videos, which have been engineered to human hearing. Dogs hear frequencies high above the human range, and it’s highly likely their vocalizations carry nuance and context in the upper frequency. A simple microphone recording won’t do - you need something with high sensitivity and minimal distortion, and you have to ensure the digitization of the sound file doesn’t interfere with the quality for those higher ranges.
The second is the sound input into the analysis, which also should be tuned for these higher frequencies - I find it unlikely that the AI was matching frequencies above human hearing to generate dog “words”.
In essence, they’re analyzing how humans hear dogs speak, not how dogs speak to each other. To do so properly, an ideal research setting would be one of dogs interacting live with each other, with sound recording equipment that can match the quality of canine hearing.
That being said, it’s a fascinating work, and I understand that the researchers were working with the data on hand - definitely shows promise for continued study.
Great points! Certainly it would be very nice to do this with better recording devices. It would be interesting to look at some dog barks with an ultrasound recording device like they use for bats, something like the Audiomoth.
I have read that adult cats both hear and communicate with ultrasound, and that when they want to communicate with people they are essentially using their version of baby talk so we are able to hear them. I hadn’t heard of anything like this for dog communication, but just looked around a little bit and found that dogs do produce some infrasounds, but they don’t hear them, although they probably do feel them. They are able to hear well into ultrasound, but I’ve not found anywhere saying that they produce them or use them communicate (although it is a bit tough to search for since so many hits are just about the fact that they hear ultrasound). Do you know of anything specific about dogs producing ultrasound?
I agree, some high range microphones placed around multiple dog interactions would be great, especially with some cameras tracking movements and actions.
Summary made by Quivr/GPT-4
This document is a research study that aims to understand the vocal language of Shiba Inu dogs. The researchers have developed a data-driven approach to analyze the semantics of Shiba Inu vocalizations and have constructed a dataset that includes dog sounds and their corresponding contexts.
The researchers have developed a pipeline to process and analyze dog-related videos on YouTube. They have identified six distinct words, sub-words, and corresponding contexts for exploring dog language. They have also defined 14 activities and 11 locations that could imply different semantic meanings which can be extracted from videos.
One of the key findings of the study is that dogs use consistent vocal patterns to signify certain meanings. For example, they found that a specific dog sound, “bow-wow,” usually indicates the dog’s curiosity about its surroundings, a meaning that was previously overlooked by other researchers.
The researchers also found that the minimal semantic unit for the Shiba Inu dog language is word-related, meaning that each distinct sound or “word” the dog makes can convey multiple meanings. This suggests that there is a potential for further classification of dog sounds into more fine-grained types.
The study also revealed that the different dog words are used in various contexts. For example, the sound a dog makes when it is begging for food, taking a shower, or playing with people can differ significantly. This suggests that the context in which a sound is made can provide important clues about its meaning.
The potential benefits of this research are significant. By better understanding the vocal language of dogs, we can improve our communication with them and potentially enhance their welfare. The approach developed in this study could also be applied to other animal species, providing a valuable tool for animal behavior research.
