Dogs can recognise their owners by their voice alone

Dogs are known for being man's best friend and a new study seems to back that claim up!

Researchers in Hungary invited 28 dogs and their owners to play a classic game of hide-and-seek.

They found that dogs can recognise their owners by voice alone, without the help of sight or smell to guide them.

Not only that, they also found that dogs seem to make use of some of the same voice properties - such as pitch and noisiness - that humans do!

Does your dog recognise your voice? Let us know in the comments below!

In the study by Eötvös Loránd University, the dogs had to find their owner behind one of two hiding places - while a stranger hid behind the other one.

They played the owner's voice from the owner's hiding place, and a stranger's voice from the other hiding place.

Scientists looked at whether the dogs could choose from a distance and find their owners.

The game had multiple rounds and the owner's voice was paired with 14 different strangers' voices, some similar to the owner's voice, some different.

The study found that the dogs could find their owner in 82 per cent of the cases, suggesting that the dogs could significantly identify their owner's voices.

Dogs have an amazing sense of smell so in order to make sure the dogs were not guided by their noses, researchers also played the owner's voice from where the stranger hid!

Scientists found that the dogs still went for the voice, which shows that they did not use their sense of smell in the task.

Attila Andics, who was involved with the study, said: "This is the first demonstration that dogs can tell apart their owner's voice from many others."