Bunny, an internet-famous sheepadoodle, has brought attention to a new area of study within animal cognition: the use of assistive technology for language acquisition
Alexis Devine and her dog, Bunny, at home in Tacoma, Wash., April 14, 2021. A 40-year-old artist and jewelry designer in Tacoma, Washington, Devine had pored over literature on canine cognition, communication and training in the months leading up to Bunny’s arrival.
One wouldn’t assume a baby was speechless if he hadn’t uttered his first word by 12 months, Hunger reasoned. So why should that logic be applied to those merely incapable of speech — whether that be a child who suffers from catatonia or a creature devoid of the necessary organs of speech, like a dog?
All of this is to say, it’s clear that dogs can follow a wide array of human social cues. But outside of movies and TV shows, dog owners have seldom claimed that their pets possess the ability to speak. With 6.6 million followers on TikTok and 818,000 on Instagram, Bunny has become the poster girl for Hunger’s canine AAC movement. “Alexis is amazing at social media,” said Hunger, who has nearly 800,000 of her own followers on Instagram, most of whom seem to be there for the dog content.
Trottier reached out to Federico Rossano, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, to help him — in Rossano’s words — “science up” the project. Currently, the study has more than 2,500 participants. Buying the FluentPet product isn’t required in order to participate, but there is an incentive on the study’s website.
Hans appeared capable of responding to simple arithmetic calculations with accuracy. For instance, when asked “What is 2+2?” he would tap his hoof four times. The idea that visually conveyed language contained the same potential for expression as speech was still relatively new when chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans began demonstrating their ability to learn and use ASL-based gestures. In the 1990s, the idea that dog development could mirror a toddler’s began to gain traction, but the research into canine communication remains very rudimentary.
“We are really interested in a recent finding which showed that there are certain facial movements in dogs that humans find very attractive, which has led to dogs evolving a facial muscle that wolves don’t,” said Juliane Kaminski, a lecturer in comparative psychology at the University of Portsmouth. “They’re puppy-dog eyes, basically.
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