{"id":13030,"date":"2022-05-12T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T03:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=119176"},"modified":"2022-05-12T05:34:10","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T03:34:10","slug":"no-bunny-the-talking-dog-cant-really-speak-english-but-heres-how-you-can-learn-to-speak-dog","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/no-bunny-the-talking-dog-cant-really-speak-english-but-heres-how-you-can-learn-to-speak-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Bunny the talking dog can\u2019t really speak English, but here\u2019s how you can learn to speak dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Jules Howard\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Bunny the dog is often in my thoughts. She is mentioned in my replies. My friends talk of her. I see her in newspapers and online articles. And, predictably, she is all over Instagram and YouTube. Why? Because Bunny (for those who have not yet seen her gift) is a dog that can do something most dogs<\/a> cannot: at the push of a button on a special keyboard, she can express her desires using human words.<\/p>\n

Bunny\u2019s YouTube videos<\/a> show her communicating a range of wants and needs, including \u2018play\u2019, \u2018food\u2019 or requests to go \u2018outside\u2019. There are even hints that she is capable of grasping sentence structure and word order, a complex linguistic concept only a handful of specially trained animals (mostly apes) have been proven to understand.<\/p>\n

So, as someone who writes about the science of dogs, what do I make of it all? Though I applaud Bunny\u2019s human companion for her amazing devotion to this wonderful dog, I find myself\u2026 surprisingly underwhelmed.<\/p>\n

First, because we\u2019ve been here before. As I detail in my book Wonderdog<\/em>, experimental setups like Bunny\u2019s have a rich history, going back to Sir John Lubbock (the 19th-Century inventor of the Bank Holiday among many other things) who trained his poodle to pick up little signs to express his wants (\u2018BONE\u2019 \u2013 as in \u2018bone\u2019) and needs (\u2018OUT\u2019 \u2013 as in, \u2018I need to pee\u2019).<\/p>\n

Later iterations of the same experiment saw animals trained to use soundboards (much like those used by Bunny, above) or even, in the case of primates, the teaching of American Sign Language, most successfully to Koko the gorilla<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But is this really human language, as you or I understand it? Just as in Lubbock\u2019s time, familiar criticisms about the validity of Bunny\u2019s gift are starting surface. The first is about sample sizes. It takes a lot of time to train an animal to use soundboards and this limits the number of dogs involved in repeatable experiments.<\/p>\n