So, not unique at all, because apparently we share that frame of reference with puppies. Canine social structures are much more like human social structures than chimpanzee social structures—maybe because humans and dogs essentially grew up together, evolutionarily speaking. “Dogs are much more like young children,” MacLean says. “If the dog is looking for something and you provide cooperative information, the dog uses this information.” Cooperation leading to the development of language is one of the leading hypotheses for what makes human beings unique among the animals. Except not so unique, because dogs can cooperate with us.

Good dogs. Would go back 15,000 years and domesticate again. 11/10.

Language-Like

About the same time as animal cognition researchers and evolutionary anthropologists were getting spun up about Rico, linguists weren’t as encouraging to Queen. She had tenure at Michigan, but colleagues still tried to wave off the idea that dog handlers had language-like communications with dogs. Queen was still thinking of it as an avocation only.

But independently she had noticed the cooperation connection, and she couldn't get it out of her head. As she writes in her presentation notes, dogs make it easier for people to handle livestock and people make the dogs’ jobs easier with a flexible communication system. We help each other. “This is most especially apparent in the whistles shepherds use to help their dogs do their job," Queen writes.

The lexicon—the “words” available for use—is small (maybe a dozen commands). But, Queen says, the whistles have what are called sign relations. They can be symbolic, where the sound doesn't have any connection to its meaning. But they can also be iconic (where you can sort of tell what they mean from their form). And even more language-like, they can also be indexical, where the meaning changes depending on how you use them. But here’s the really cool part: Shepherds vary the whistles’ rhythms, pitches, speed, and volume, and "each of those variations provides different kinds of information about what the dog should do,” Queen says. That’s called “prosody,” and it’s a key part of human language.

Shepherds don’t think of their dogs as little furry people. They understand them as dogs. Robin Queen, University of Michigan

Just as you might speak more loudly and clearly if you think someone doesn’t understand you, a shepherd will more clearly and slowly blow a command if the dog seems to hesitate. Higher pitches attract attention. A faster whistle tells the dog to speed up, even if they haven’t been trained to do it. (That’s “iconic meaning.”)

When commands have to come faster or more urgently, handlers simplify and remove the parts of the shared language that they don’t need. Queen says this is an example of “metapragmatics,” or speakers understanding how to use their speech. This communication system has none of the “who’s-a-good-dog-yes-you-are” cooing that you might hear between a dog owner and its pet. “Shepherds don’t think of their dogs as little furry people. They understand them as dogs,” Queen says. “It’s this really interesting question of, how do you communicate with a species that doesn’t share your communication system, that doesn’t share your kind of mind?” The answer, roughly, is that anything that might convey whether the handler thinks the dog is doing well or poorly gets cut. “Those parts of language that the dog can’t understand—because it’s not a human—come out.”

Handlers even start to acquire a certain style and élan as they get more experienced. Human and dog learn each other's idiosyncrasies and styles. As Queen talked to more handlers about how they thought about what they were doing, she got better at it herself—and came to appreciate other people's skills all the more. “As people learn to do this, they become much more aware of the nuance,” Queen says. “They become much more able to understand, in a sense, the conversation going on between an accomplished shepherd and a dog.”