Anybody who's trained for dog agility or for retrieving knows that dogs understand pointing gestures. What's more, they can distinguish between left and right, and between a straight "over", a "back" and an "angle back". As well as "come in", "easy" and "way back".
Instead of spending all that money, why didn't they just come out to a training day?
I swear my dog knows when I put on shoes whether I am staying home or going out.......she knows what ones I will wear when leaving the house and she starts following me everywhere when she sees them.
Thankfully, Eötvös Loránd University (the institution that conducted the study) is located in Hungary. This probably means it was US taxpayers that funded such nonsense.
My late Golden (Terra deceased at 15 and a half) went stone cold deaf and it took a neighbor to tell us — she was so good at reading our body language!
Some dogs may be the equivalent of 2 year olds, and some are like 4 year olds.