Dogs understand different growls (duh!!)

Max is also tri-lingual like I am but the canine version of FOXP2 in works here :

"Proving that animal vocalisations have specific meanings – and what they could be – is challenging. In 2008, Péter Pongrácz, a behavioural biologist atEötvös Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary, monitored dogs' heart rates to show that they seem to notice a difference between barks aimed at strangers and those directed at nothing in particular. Now he has gone a step further and shown that dogs respond differently to different vocalisations.

Pongrácz's team recorded growls from 20 pet dogs in three different situations: a tug-of-war game with their owner, competing with another dog for a bone and growling at an approaching stranger. Growls may convey more meaning than barks, says Pongrácz: wolves rarely bark, and he says dogs may have learned to bark to get human attention.The team played the recordings to 36 other dogs that had each been left to gnaw on a bone. Only those that heard the food-guarding growls tended to back off from the bone and stay away."It seems dogs can understand something about the context," Pongrácz says."