Dogs seem to agree with humans that 'bouba' is round and 'kiki' is spiky

A new study found that dogs, like humans, associate the made-up word "bouba" with round shapes and "kiki" with spiky shapes, suggesting a universal connection between sounds and visual forms that extends beyond humans. Researchers at the University of Parma conducted experiments with 70 dogs, tracking their gaze as they were exposed to these words paired with different shapes on screens, and found statistically significant patterns matching the human associations. This builds on a decades-old psychological phenomenon showing that most people across different languages and cultures make the same sound-shape associations, now demonstrated in a non-human species.