2023-08-23 05:37:23
22/08/2023
Surely if you have the TikTok social network, you have come across one or another video in which dogs appear communicating with their humans through mats with buttons. The different buttons have words like “let’s go”, “play”, “park” and that they sink to form sentences and communicate with humans.
One of the most popular on this social network is Bunny the dog, a sheepdog who has more than 8 million followers on the platform, where he posts videos in which he communicates with his human through these mats that facilitate communication between both.
This phenomenon is being investigated by some specialists, who seek to understand if communication through this mat is really effective or if it is simply a coincidence in which the dog sinks buttons, putting together coherent sentences for humans.
Cognition experts are wary of this type of communication between humans and dogs. However, in the article Can Dogs Use Language? , published in the Scientific American magazine, ensures that there are puppies capable of learning at least 12 words. Although there are “genius” dogs that have been trained to learn hundreds of words.
“I like that it makes people interact with their dogs in a richer way,” Amritha Mallikarjun, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, tells Scientific American regarding the use of canine communication buttons. “But they just can’t talk like humans do.”
Some neuroscience studies indicate that dogs have co-evolved to pay attention and understand human communication signals. In fact, in a study published in Current Biology in 2021, a group of eight-week-old puppies paid attention to human faces, voices, and gestures.
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To study the “button dog” phenomenon, researchers focus on animals that already live with and are pets of humans. At this moment they have more than 10,000 participants in 47 countries, according to the scientific journal. In each house they have installed cameras to monitor 24 hours a day.
“All the research that has been done with dogs has to do with comprehension,” says Federico Rossano, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
This is the first major study on the language production of dogs: can they use word-shaped buttons?
For now, the researchers continue to analyze the data. Early data suggests that pups can learn to associate words with some sort of meaning. For example, they know how to press a button to get the attention of humans.
Some dogs have the ability to use between 40 and 50 buttons, while five or six have learned more than 100 buttons. For now, the information remains preliminary.
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