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

I think objects with these shapes make similar sounds in the real world. Sharp shapes make percussive sounds. Round shapes make softer sounds.

Dog's have very good hearing, and their hearing must help them to model the world around them, to understand what different objects in the world are.

So I think it's less about linguistics and more about our audiovisual mapping of the physical world.

Then again, that must be where the origin of language evolved from in the first place.

Related. Others?

Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47105198 - Feb 2026 (107 comments)

Which is "Bouba", and which is "Kiki"? [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572742 - Jan 2026 (23 comments)

Bouba / Kiki Effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45320327 - Sept 2025 (2 comments)

Bouba/kiki effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40699583 - June 2024 (170 comments)

Bouba/Kiki Effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27885703 - July 2021 (94 comments)

Bouba/kiki effect - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372550 - Sept 2014 (1 comment)

> Each dog/owner pair entered a room set up with a screen and a speaker to the left, and another screen and speaker to the right.

I do not think this is realible experiment. Dogs are very sensitive to non verbal cues from their owner.

For example if owner is scared, it will defend the owner. I get assaulted all the time, by dog owners who unleash their dogs on me, in self defense.

Edit: just to clarify

I get assaulted about once a week, while running at park at morning. I was at hospital a few times, mostly it is unwanted physical contact.

It is leash only park full of runners, I have no idea why any sane person would allow dogs to run freely there!

I can not afford to move out. I started wearing body cam, and air horn.

I too would associate "Bouba" with the rounded and "Kiki" with the sharper figure, but to me this is just a relatively universal sense of continuity vs discontinuities:

the local curvature is continuous for "Bouba", every point on the curve has a single tangent, which evolves continuously as you walk along this presented curve.

For Kiki: the local curvature is discontinuous: at the inward or outward points, there are 2 tangents, so the tangent abruptly switches value when passing through this point when walking along the curve.

similarly the "B"s in "Bouba" are voiced plosives, while the "K"s in "Kiki" are unvoiced plosives.

I think people would similarily classify "Titi, Pipi, Touta, Poupa, Kouka" like "Kiki" but "Didi, Douda, Bibi, Gigi, Gouga" like "Bouba".

The vowels are obviously voiced by the vocal chord carrier wave "voice".

So when we pass through the unvoiced (T/P/K) plosives, we notice discontinuity like the discontinuously evolving tangents along the boundary curve of the figure.

Obviously mammals like dogs have a concept of continuity, topology, distance, they might get spooked by "open" stairs, because they can see between the planks, etc.

And when we hear voiced (D,B,G) plosives, the voice while muted still evolves continuously.

Is 'bouba' pronounced 'bowba', 'bohba', or 'booba'? And why isn't it spelled like that instead?

Good boys! Good boys.

As a human I agree with dogs that 'Bouba' is round and 'Kiki' is spiky.

In all seriousness, and I am surprised the article does not mention this, as dumb as it sounds Kiki has "sharp" sounds when pronouncing it and "Bouba" has a softer feel to it when pronouncing it.

As the article says it does not matter what language you speak, a word that quickly changes the sound back and forth to the same thing sounds sharp because that is how sharp things look and feel. The serration on a knife has the same angle on either side leading to a point. This is what makes sense to me as to why we correspond Kiki to something sharp.

Which is spikier qktqb or rrqtyun? For me personally, rrqtyun is spikier although certain models seem to disagree. GPT (Astra) believes qktqb is spikier.

This one is also a curiosity

> isn't klop right at the edge between spiky and round

> Yes. “Klop” is borderline, but leans slightly spiky.

For me kiki is more red than spiky.

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