Researchers in Hungary say they've found that dogs can recognize their owners by their voice alone.
The dogs' owners were invited in on the study and were able to record their voices and use their voices in various parts of the study. The dogs had to choose from a distance and had to look for their owner who was hiding. The game lasted multiple rounds and the owner's voice was mixed in with the voices of 14 different strangers.
The study, done at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, found that after looking at 28 dogs, they determined that the animals were able to find their owner in 82% of cases.
A senior researcher at the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd Universitytold CNN, "Probably in a lot of cases dogs have to switch on their nose to find things and they don't just use it routinely all the time."
In the study it said, "Humans are highly skilled in extracting identity information from speech from an early age."
The study found that dogs have a high ability to recognize aspects of voice in humans, like pitch.
Tamás Faragó, a senior researcher at the Department of Ethology for the university said, "Of course, usually, the dogs meet in person with humans so that they can differentiate us by our looks, and also the smell, and they use all these things, but there are more and more research and technology going into this direction."
