Can a Dog Say 'I Love You' With a Button?
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Can dogs really communicate their feelings with buttons?
We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper Your dog looks at you in the eyes, chooses one button from a bunch you've laid out on the floor that says love, and suddenly you're melting. But is that affection or just your dog manipulating you? What is the actual science behind dogs talking? Are pooches actually using language or are we just falling for emotional manipulation?
What is the science behind dogs using buttons to communicate?
What is the story here? We're here with someone who researches this. His name is Federico Rossano, and he's a cognitive sciences professor at UC San Diego. Federico, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So these buttons that get laid out on the ground, most people have seen viral videos of dogs, quote unquote, communicating with them. Walk me through what's actually going on.
How do pets learn to use communication buttons effectively?
Is it a product? Can I buy it? How common is it for people to have?
Yeah, so it's apparently a quite popular product. I don't sell them. I don't make them. I have no affiliation with any company that produces them. But basically is a button that you can record your voice on for example you can say outside or i love you or bye and when it's pressed it just reproduces that sound so you could use it for fun with friends with a kid but it has now in the last few years been used with dogs and cats in people's homes and people have been training their pets to basically use these devices to let them know when they want to go outside when they want food or when they're upset about something
I'm struck by people immediately believing that when their pets use these buttons and use them correctly, that they're somehow speaking with them, that they understand language. My brother's dog, when he taps on the glass door of his back of his house, that just means I want to go outside to go to the bathroom.
What are the limitations of dog communication through buttons?
When my cat meows at me near his cat bowl, that means he wants to eat. How is pressing a button to achieve that goal kind of any different than just basic communication?
No, I mean, absolutely. It's learned in the same way. I guess the difference is, you know, they can scratch the door and you know they want to go outside, but you don't know why they want to go outside.
Can dogs express complex emotions like love with buttons?
Do they need to go poo? Do they need to, did they hear something they want to chase? Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. I think the difference is there might be for some people, it might be beneficial to know, for example, when you're hungry, when you're thirsty, when you want to play, when you have any other kind of issue. Some dogs communicate about being in pain. And I think, again, you might imagine that they're sick. You might know that they have a problem, but you don't know what body part they have a problem in, right? So the idea is that it's supposed to be, and again, I'm not making them, so I'm not trying to sell it. It's supposed to be another tool to kind of gather a little more information about what's going on through their minds.
But can these pets really conceptualize language?
How do dogs communicate their needs and emotions naturally?
Like can they express a complex sentence or in a complex emotion like love using these buttons? Or when you press, when the dog presses love, it just knows that it gets treats and that's how it kind of learned it.
Well, you know, my answer to this is like, when your partner says, I love you, do they mean it? It's like, you just don't know. All you get is like, they say it and then you might get a hug or you might get a kiss or something. So the reality is you never know for humans either whether they, what it really means. What you know is the behavioral response that follows, right? And so I think part of what we're interested in is not making claims about them being able to have language because I don't believe they have language. But what I definitely believe is that they can communicate. And of course, they can try to communicate concepts at a level of granularity that might be different from what they we can make sense of when they scratch the door or when they bark.
So imagine when your dog is barking, you know there's a problem, but you don't know what it is that they want.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Can dogs really communicate their feelings with buttons?
0:00–0:30
2
What is the science behind dogs using buttons to communicate?
0:30–0:53
3
How do pets learn to use communication buttons effectively?
0:53–1:55
4
What are the limitations of dog communication through buttons?
1:55–2:15
5
Can dogs express complex emotions like love with buttons?
2:15–3:07
6
How do dogs communicate their needs and emotions naturally?
3:07–4:40
7
What are some examples of dogs communicating about pain?
4:40–5:57
8
How do dogs compare to toddlers in their communication abilities?
5:57–10:33
Speakers
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