University of Parma researchers showed rounded and pointed shapes to 70 adult dogs while playing the sounds Bouba and Kiki. Two experiments involving 51 and 19 dogs found a tendency to look more toward the shape corresponding to the sound. In the second experiment, owners wore headphones to reduce inadvertent cues, and head direction in video served as a proxy for gaze. The university’s announcement notes that effects of experience and species-specific characteristics remain unresolved. The findings explore associations between sounds and visual information, not a conclusion that dogs understand word meanings as humans do.