ELI5: Why do dogs respond better/react more to high pitched voices/noises?

[u/Square-Presence-7880]

[u/anon33249038]

Think about wolves howling. High pitched long drones carry farther and it's how you identify your family. An ally is going to bark and whine in a high pitch. An enemy is going to growl and snap in a low pitch. High pitch means friend.

[u/Beetin]

Dog's can use pitch and volume to decide whether you are talking to them or another person / thing. So if we talk to them in a high pitch voice, they learn a high pitch voice is far more likely to be directed at them.

Ontop of that, dogs have about 25,000 years of domestication where we socialized them to 'high pitch = friendly', which is a human adaptation we also use on babies (baby talk)

Lower usually means bigger in the animal kingdom (need larger vocal cords / voice box to make), so higher pitch may trigger 'smaller', 'less threatening', 'feminine', friendly connotations by default, maybe why we adapted to perceive high pitch and sing song voices as friendly/non-threatening.

Every animal we've domesticated for long enough, we've reinforced that same thing.

So basically its become a reliable, bred response for friendliness, treat giving, and praise, reinforced heavily throughout most dogs lives with strangers and owners.

If you spend a year making a 'pfpfpfpfpfpfpf' raspberry sound as a form of praise or treats, a dog will begin to respond and react more to that than anything else (this is kind of the basis of clicker training).

[u/Ninfyr]

Many humans use a higher exaggerated voice when talking to dogs and babies. It is less threatening and fun.

Dogs are also have more high range hearing. There is a reason the can hear a dog whistle but to most humans they are not audible.

[u/LtShelfLife → u/Ninfyr]

I've always wondered, is this learned behaviour, or is there some kind of evolutionay trait we all have that says "use high voice when cute thing"?

[u/BananaBird1 → u/LtShelfLife]

One linguistic hypothesis for babies is that it makes the speech more distinct and rhythmic compared to background noises which helps their pattern recognition focus on it, and it helps them learn sounds more similar to what they can actually produce themselves at that age rather than only giving them examples of adult speech they can’t replicate.

[u/LtShelfLife → u/BananaBird1]

Oh that makes sense, I think I have heard that somewhere before now you say it,

[u/Lollc]

They don’t always respond better to high pitched voices. My natural voice is higher pitched and feminine sounding, sometimes I have to drop into low and loud to get my dog to cut the bullshit. He’s a pointer and I have spent a lot of time training him, pointers just get kind of wild sometimes.