Israeli jails are using a custom-built computer program to interpret the barks of guard dogs -- to help prison staff distinguish between everyday, run of the mill woofs and, "HEY, SOMEBODY'S ESCAPING!" barks.

Noam Tavor, head of the Israel Prisons Service canine unit, said the program is designed to overcome mistakes in which guards have either not heard dogs sounding an alarm or failed to identify the significance of the barking.

"It collects the dogs' barks through microphones ... and sorts and grades them," Tavor said. "It relays only the barks that are significant in terms of security — barks that reveal stress or aggression in the dog."

Tavor, according to an Associated Press article, said prison staff would sometimes ignore dogs' barks if they thought it was nothing serious, what he called the "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon.

The system, installed three years ago, was created by Bio-Sense, a high-tech company headquartered near Tel Aviv. Bio-Sense recorded the patrol dogs barking in different situations, from playtime to cat encounters to actual emergencies.