Ever wished you could read your dog's mind and delve into their inner thoughts?
Unfortunately, we can't offer you any developments on that front just yet (sigh).
What we can reveal, though, is that new research indicates that dogs may indeed be able to understand what we say to them. Knew it.
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The news will thrill dog lovers who have long claimed to have full-blown conversations with their furry friends.
Conducted by the University of Sussex, the study found that dogs were not only able to identify when someone new was speaking, but when they said a new word.
Working with 42 domestic dogs, scientists discovered that the four-legged participants could spontaneously recognise the same word when spoken by a variety of different people, including humans they were unfamiliar with.
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This is a major discovery. While we know that humans are highly skilled when it comes to voice recognition, and can recognise the same word spoken by different people, the skill was thought to be unique to mankind.
"Until now, the spontaneous ability to recognise vowel sounds when spoken by different people was considered to be uniquely human," said Dr Holly Root-Gutteridge, who headed up the research.
"But many dog owners believe their dogs can learn a word from one person and recognise it when spoken by a second or third person.
"We wanted to test if dogs can recognise the same phonemes - the little sounds that make up words - when spoken by different people, ignoring the differences in accent and pronunciation."
The pooches were filmed reacting to recordings of men and women speaking short words containing similar sounds, like hid, had, heard and heed.
No treats or affection were offered as encouragement, and traditional commands like 'sit' and 'fetch' were left out, as they were too familiar to give a true results.
Findings showed the clever canines were able to hear the same word spoken by different people, and recognise it as the same word, even when pronounced with different accents and vowel sounds.
Dr Root-Gutteridge concluded that: "The ability to recognise words as the same when spoken by different people is critical to speech.
"This research shows that, despite previous assumptions, this spontaneous ability is not uniquely human and that dogs share this linguistic talent, suggesting that speech perception may not be as special to humans as we previously thought."
Mind. Blown.
Lassie, be a pet and fetch me the Sauv Blanc out the fridge, will you?
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash