If you’ve been on Instagram or TikTok recently, you’ve likely seen the viral video of a dog pressing a button on a soundboard while its proud owner feigns annoyance at his dog’s eloquent demands.
Who wouldn’t want to have the opportunity to speak to our beloved pets in a way we can understand?
Skeptic Like this biologist Naturally, owners are raising eyebrows at the trend, with some claiming their dogs can use the soundboard to make sentences like requests for food. Get help, Raise the alarmand even Questioning your own image in the mirror.
frameborder=”0″ allow=”Accelerometer; Autoplay; Clipboard writing; Encrypted media; Gyroscope; Picture-in-picture; Web sharing” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>
But a new study led by scientists at the Institute for Comparative Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, finds that this viral phenomenon is more than just a gimmick.
“This study addresses public skepticism about whether dogs really understand the meaning of buttons.” say Cognitive scientist Federico Rossano is the lead author of the study.
He said he found that “words are important to dogs, and they respond to the words themselves, not just the associated cues.”
When an owner says the word “outside,” a dog may respond by running for the door, but would the dog react the same if the owner instead pressed a button on a soundboard? What if the word was spoken by someone they didn’t know? Or what if a stranger pressed the button on the soundboard?
To test these variables, the team conducted two experiments investigating the circumstances under which dogs understood specific words.
Pet household dogs were split into two separate groups; in one experiment researchers visited the homes of 30 dogs, and in the other 29 dog owners carried out the experiment themselves, following the scientists’ instructions.
The dogs had already been trained by their owners to respond to the words “outside/outside,” “play/toy,” and “food/eat/dinner/hungry” using a sound board (also known as an augmented interspecies communication (AIC) device).
Regardless of who delivered the words (unfamiliar researcher or dog’s owner) or how they were delivered (verbally or by button press), the dogs in the study responded to play-related and outdoor-related words with context-appropriate behaviors.
“This suggests that dogs respond appropriately to button presses even in the absence of other contextual or owner-generated cues,” the authors say. Report.
In both experiments, dogs displayed roughly seven times more play-directed behavior in response to the play-related words and similar amounts of externally directed behavior in response to the externally related words, “suggesting that dogs recognized and responded appropriately to the two words,” the authors write. write.
However, the researchers found no conclusive evidence that the dogs responded explicitly to food-related words with food-directed behavior.
nice to meet you Cunning Trickster #Clever Boy #SmartDog #operation #talkingdog
Because the results were comparable whether the experiments were conducted by researchers or by dog ​​owners who followed instructions, Lozano and his colleagues say they could potentially enlist dog owners around the world as citizen scientists to expand the evidence for soundboard-based communication.
meanwhile Previous research It also suggests that dogs can use and understand at least some words correctly. Border Collie ChaserThe researchers note that participants who knew the names of the 1,022 toys were not testing linguistic cues in the absence of other contextual cues.
“Future research [will] Rossano investigated how dogs actively use these buttons, and the meaning and systematicity of the order in which they press the buttons. say.
“Our work highlights the importance of studying animals in their habitat, providing a more ecologically valid understanding of their capabilities.”
This study ProSone.
