For once, NBC’s Saturday Night Live skewered liberals in this hilarious skit featuring Scarlett Johansson’s pet pug Max and a device that translates his innermost thoughts. While most of Max’s thinking is typical for a dog, it soon becomes clear that the pooch also has undoubted political leanings that are very different from his owner!
While the device in this skit is completely fictional, a real-life study at Budapest’s Eotvos Lorand University found that dogs can and do differentiate human voices and that dogs can pick up on the tones and moods of speeches, even if they can’t exactly parse the language.
The university used neuroimaging to see how dogs responded to various kinds of vocal stimuli. “It’s very interesting to understand the toolkit that helps successful vocal communication between two species,” said Attila Andics, the lead author of the canine study. “We didn’t need neuroimaging to see that communication works [between dogs and people], but without it, we didn’t understand why it works. Now we’re really starting to.”
As it turns out, dogs prioritize humans’ (and other dogs’) sounds over anything else. Based on the university’s research, a device like the one in this skit may one day become a reality. Will we find that President Trump has a whole host of supporters he never knew about? It will be fun to find out! Watch as SNL turns the tables on liberals in this humorous sketch.
