Button Pressing Science For Dogs
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Broadcasting intimate details and useless information from an undisclosed location in New York City. The Last Show with David Cooper. We've all seen the videos online, they circulate, of dogs pressing buttons to talk to their humans. But are they communicating ideas or are they just very good at pushing buttons? Let's look at what the science says about how well dogs understand language, or at least button language, here with Dr. Holly Molinaro, an animal welfare consultant at Animal Wellbeing Solutions. Holly, welcome into the program.
Thank you.
I'm always very skeptical when I see like a crow playing tic-tac-toe, a chicken playing tic-tac-toe, a dog pressing buttons like they know, you know, oh, I'm ready for a walk or I'm happy. I think they've just memorized what to do to get a treat. I am skeptical. But people have actually researched this, haven't they?
Yes, it's actually interesting because the researchers even doing the science on this stuff, it's really looked down upon in the scientific literature. People are like, most scientists are like, absolutely no way. But that means we don't really have a lot of science about it.
What do dogs really mean when they press buttons?
And then there's some like the button pressing companies want to fund science to... Big dog button has got an agenda?
Oh boy.
Yes, it does.
So there's not that much research on it right now. But what we know about dogs in general and like language and animals and all that stuff is that I think you're right to be skeptical. Dogs can learn. They're very smart. They can learn a lot of things. Like we used to train our dog at home to ring bells to go outside when you had to go to the bathroom. So we can train dogs to press a bunch of buttons to tell us, you know, treats, outside, walk. But when it starts to go into, oh, my dog's telling me a complex story with sentence structure, then I'm like, I don't think so.
That's where they've lost you. Animals can learn, press this, get that. I mean, but that doesn't show like a deep understanding of grammar. And it's more like a concept of, oh, button pressed, treat got. Is that kind of like... Exactly. But these videos online, they're pretty convincing. Do you think they're fake or the creator took a thousand takes? Like, we've got, I don't know if it's good evidence, but we've got some evidence that dogs are maybe smarter than we think. But, okay, so... I'm interested in why scientists look down at this research. That seems very unscientific to me.
Yeah, so I think it's because of those videos online where it's like the dog is saying, I had a dream about wandering through the clouds or something like that. And then scientists are like, there's no way that dogs can tell us about their dreams. So yeah, I think that's why scientists for a long time just didn't even want to touch it. Because if they did, I even know of a scientist who wanted to research it. And his other scientist friends were like, don't you dare. Oh, wow.
You're not getting invited to the dog science Christmas party is what you're saying. Is there a difference between like intentional communication and just like, oh, I don't know, just a button press to get a treat or a button press to be let out to go take a poopy or something?
Yeah. So I think we have to think about a lot of times people think about dogs as little humans, but dogs are not humans at all. So we talk to each other for a lot of different reasons, whereas dogs, when they talk to other dogs, it's mostly about smells. Like they'll leave their pee on the side of the road to leave a note for their fellow passerbyers. So they don't talk to each other like we talk to each other. So when it comes to buttons, they're going to use the buttons to talk to humans saying things that they would talk to a human about, which is, I want a treat. I need to go to the bathroom. Things like that. They don't have any need to tell their fellow human about their innermost thoughts.
How do scientists view research on dog communication?
I imagine like if your dog could talk, they would not be saying much other than like, oh, I like the smell of that.
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