CINCINNATI (WKRC) – A new global study found evidence that dogs can understand and combine concepts and, if given the right tools, can even “talk” to their owners.
The study, conducted by the University of California San Diego’s Department of Cognitive Science, involved dogs using an innovative new strategy to facilitate communication between animals and humans – an array of buttons that each speak a different word when pressed.
The researchers tracked button presses from dogs living in 47 different countries around the world to see if there was any real cohesion or understanding in the buttons they were pressing, or if they just realized pressing certain buttons resulted in certain actions being done.
One of the most popular participants in the study is a Blue Heeler-Catahoula mix named Stella, whose owner has amassed a large following on TikTok by posting Stella’s attempts at communication. One of the more impressive feats Stella accomplished occurred around the time of her daily beach trip, only the button she usually pressed for “beach” as missing. Instead, Stella pressed “help,” “water,” and “outside” one after another, implying that Stella could understand and combine concepts to create new ones.
“She was able to generalize the concept of water from being just, ‘Oh, water in my bowl’ to water as a more general thing that can exist at the beach and be much larger than four inches in diameter,” said Leo Trottier, PhD graduate and CEO of FluentPet, the company that sells the communication buttons.
Although much more research needs to be done to determine whether or not furry friends could actually be taught to communicate with humans or if Stella is just a particularly smart dog, the possibility that one day humans could “talk” to their dogs is undoubtedly interesting.
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