A recent study published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science reveals that dog barking is—no surprise to many dog owners—a nuanced form of communication much like birdsong and infant crying. What's more, these forms of communication share acoustic properties in how they convey basic emotions, such as fear—which facilitates cross-species communication.
From the abstract:
"These findings show that dog barks function as predicted by the structural–motivational rules developed for acoustic signals in other species, suggesting that dog barks may present a functional system for communication at least in the dog–human relationship."
You can read the abstract online, and/or purchase the journal article, at the Science Direct website. The Discovery Channel has also posted an article on the new research, which you can read here.
thank you for sharing the article.
It was very interesting, and I must say that somehow it strikes me as one of those instances where scientific studies support what most animal owners "know" - I sure "know" that our four dogs use barks as communications - and even us humans can tell the difference between "bark - a person is coming to the door" and "bark - there are a fox in the henhouse" etc. Of course then there are the tricky one, as when all the dogs are settled with a bone each, and Anuke gets up, goes the the next room and do her "bark-someone at the door" Making all the others run out to the door, and thereby giving NAuke ample time to walk around the room, studying each bone and carefully choosing the best one...
Christina