Why do dogs tilt their heads when you talk to them?
An exploratory analysis of head-tilting in dogs
Dogs that know the names of their toys tilt their heads far more when their owner asks for a toy by name.
Researchers in Budapest studied some very rare dogs: “gifted word learners” that know the names of lots of their toys. Owners asked them to fetch toys by name, and the team compared their head movements with ordinary dogs hearing the same requests.
The word-learning dogs tilted their heads much more often, and each dog had a favourite side it always tilted to. That adorable head tilt may be the look of a dog really concentrating on what you just said.
The head tilt means “processing… please wait”.