A video showing Bawang, a nine-month-old police dog from Lishui, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which can understand commands in German has gone viral on Chinese social media platforms.Photo: web

A video showing Bawang, a nine-month-old police dog from Lishui, Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which can understand commands in German has gone viral on Chinese social media platforms. In the video, Bawang's timely and correct responses to commands such as "stand," "sit" and "at ease" issued by the dog handler in German have won praise from netizens.

Bawang is a native Chinese dog. Police dogs like Bawang, who can understand two or even three languages, are not uncommon in China. 

In addition to German, the 3-year-old Piqiu from Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality can also execute the dog trainer's command in English from time to time. 

"There are more than 10 passwords in English and German, which are needed for daily training and field investigation," Chen Daijie, Piqiu's dog trainer said. 

Since joining the police, Piqiu has helped the local police department solve dozens of cases and participated in the criminal investigation of the hunt for robbers, a martyrs tomb robbery, and other major cases.

Netizens were shocked by Bawang and Piqiu's language abilities, noting that even humans may find it difficult to communicate bilingually at a young age. According to experts, multi-language training is important to prevent criminals from using foreign languages to manipulate police dogs, which requires very high requirements on the dogs themselves and the efforts of the dog handlers as well.