Teaching Dogs To Talk, The New Fashion

Why teach dogs to talk? Many will say. They already communicate with us in so many ways that it is easy to read their emotions and needs at all times. However, those who know Bunny, the star dog of Tik Tok, will know that there is a new fashion and it is none other than to teach them a new mechanism to express what they want and need.

Bunny is the dog of Alexis Devine, a young woman who has been training her pet for several months with an original device of lights and prerecorded words designed by the ethologist and language pathologist Christina Hunger. Your dog is now 15 months old and has already mastered about 70 buttons (words) with which she interacts and communicates with her owner.

This fact has not gone unnoticed by the world of science. The power of social networks is like an open window and this has caused several universities to have wanted to meet Bunny in person.

The San Diego Comparative Cognition Laboratory was the first academic body to investigate the case of this sympathetic animal.

And in what has concluded the investigation? We analyze it below. Bunny, like many cats, gorillas and even horses, is also part of those stories about a supposed communicative learning that is worth delving into.

Is it possible to teach dogs to talk?

Many may know the story of the horse Hans. This animal lived on a farm in the north of Berlin, Germany, and at the beginning of the 20th century it acquired an unparalleled fame. He had learned neither more nor less than to perform basic mathematical operations, such as addition and subtraction.

It solved calculations by pressing with its legs a board with numbers and letters. Now, the psychologist Carl Stumpf, intrigued by that striking case, decided to investigate the case.

Something he discovered was that the animal, although not a math connoisseur, had developed another ability: it was able to “read” the attitude of humans. That is, if he was given several response options, what he did first was to observe the people around him to intuit the answer.

The horse Hans had developed a much more sophisticated type of communication. Something that was not overlooked in the world of science and ethology.

Also famous is the case of the gorilla Koko, a fascinating animal that in the 1980s became well known for mastering sign language. He came to reproduce more than 1,000 signs and understand more than 2,000 words in English.

Now, in the 21st century and with the rise of social networks, the absolute star is Bunny. He has more than 5 million followers on Tik Tok, we have been knowing his progress since he was a small and adorable puppy.

Bunny, the dog who is “learning” to communicate

Alexis Devine has trained his dog for 10 months using a button board. Each button has a color and when you press it, words like “food”, “go for a walk”, “go outside to play”, “happy” and so on. Thus, when asked if it is possible to teach dogs to speak, the answer has nuances.

• Dogs already have their own language. They will not be able to learn to speak, but through proper training with psychologists and ethologists they can learn a rudimentary form of communication.
• Bunny’s case is different. It is being trained by its owner, not by experts, and the research being conducted by the University of San Diego is not yet complete.

• Now, ethologists point out something interesting to us. Bunny responds to the classic example of operant conditioning. In other words, the dog’s behavior is motivated by one objective: to obtain a reward after pressing a certain button.
• Bunny often hits the “I love you” button because she knows she will get a hug from her human mom. He also often chooses the “massage” button because he knows his gut will be scratched or “play” to be offered a toy.

Teaching dogs to talk, a new business

Behind Bunny’s story there is something else. And that something is FluentPet, a company that makes keyboards for animals in order to teach them to communicate with their humans. It is true that this firm works in collaboration with researchers from the University of California and that their objective is to understand how dogs learn.

However, Bunny’s account on Tik Tok is still a way to attract the interest of millions of people to acquire this toy.

Likewise, experts point out that a large part of the videos published about Bunny and other dogs that use FluentPet are edited. They are not raw recordings, therefore they only teach us the most interesting and positive parts.

Dogs already have their own language: the magic is in understanding them and that they understand us

Is it really worth teaching dogs to talk? The answer is simple: our dogs, like any other animal, already have their own communication mechanism.

Studies such as those carried out at the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy indicate that dogs use eye contact and body expression with us to express their emotions and needs. It is not difficult to understand them.

Therefore, in our attempt to humanize animals, we are perhaps losing the pleasure of understanding each other, that they read to us and we can read in them everything they say to us on a daily basis. That is the true charm of living with animals.