

- Bunni how we first met updates how to#
- Bunni how we first met updates full#
- Bunni how we first met updates series#
Bunni how we first met updates series#
When Bunny presses “Settle, Sound, Ouch,” she might be using a novel string of known words to tell someone to quiet down, or she might be pressing a random series of buttons while confirmation bias on our part does the rest of the work. When Bunny asks “Where, Dad” does that mean she has a sense of spatial displacement, where she is aware of “Dad” and acknowledging that he is not present in the room with her? When another dog presses “Water, Outside,” is that an observation about the rain, or is it a sass #BiggestFan #fyp #tiktokdogs #talkingdog #whataboutbunny ♬ original sound - I am Bunny

They’re also looking at how much the animals seem to be exhibiting properties that are generally claimed to be uniquely human, like temporal and spatial displacement, or the ability to make observations and form narratives. Rossano’s hope is that with a large pool of diverse participants, they may be able to start drawing connections between factors like breed or age with learning speed. That means basic data collection, like figuring out the speed at which a dog learns to associate a button that says “outside” with going outside. One of the first things they’re looking at is how quickly the animals are learning to use the buttons. Rossano and his colleagues plan to use the footage to understand different aspects of animal cognition and communication - not just whether they can communicate using something like language, but also how that communication might work. “We want to make sure we’re not just getting cherry-picked clips,” says Rossano.
Bunni how we first met updates how to#
“We want to make sure we’re not just getting cherry-picked clips.”Įach participant receives instructions on how to set up their buttons, starting with words like “outside” and “play.” Cameras are constantly pointed at their personalized boards, and that footage is sent to the lab where researchers comb through and code what they see. There are now over 700 participants, including dogs, cats, and even horses, and Rossano says the growing number is almost certainly due to Bunny’s popularity drawing people in. They hope to determine scientifically whether non-humans can really use something like language to communicate. They began planning a project to study Bunny and other dogs like her who are learning to use the buttons. Bunny is now 15 months old, and her system has expanded into a mat with over 70 buttons.Īfter Devine’s videos started picking up traction in early spring, Federico Rossano, director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at UC San Diego, started discussing them with people in his department. Inspired by Hunger, Devine diligently trained Bunny from puppyhood and started setting up her own system one button at a time. The board is an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device - an umbrella term for tools from boards with symbols on them to speech-generating devices - which is typically used by nonverbal people to communicate without speech.
Bunni how we first met updates full#
They haven’t gotten anywhere close to an answer yet, but they’re gathering a lot of data along the way.īunny’s journey started when Devine saw videos from Christina Hunger, a speech-language pathologist who has been teaching her dog Stella to use a board full of buttons with words prerecorded on them. One question persists among fans and skeptics alike: is this dog really “talking”? Inspired by Bunny’s videos, researchers at the Comparative Cognition Lab at UC San Diego are trying to find out.


“Most of the memes are really funny, I got a good laugh out of them,” she says.Īlong with Bunny’s demands for scritches, Devine, an artist and self-identified nonexpert in dog science, fields hundreds of questions from humans every day. There are parody videos on TikTok and existential jokes on Twitter about Bunny’s sentience. People are fascinated by Bunny and her ability to “talk.” She has 5 million followers on TikTok, and the likes on each video are in the hundreds of thousands. #whataboutbunny #sheepadoodle #hunger4words #BestFriendDay #mydogtalks #petroutine #talkingdog #cute #smartdog #tiktokdog #cutepup #aac ♬ original sound - I am Bunny
