00:00 You can train a dog to speak, but you can't train it to use words. Until now.
00:05 A new product called Talking Buttons, like this example from Fluent Pet,
00:09 allows pet owners to record words like "outside" or "food" onto buttons that their animals can
00:15 press in order to communicate what they want. According to Vice, the concept was invented by
00:19 a speech pathologist named Christina Hunger, who got the idea from her work with children.
00:24 And now, these devices are inspiring scientific research into what they can reveal about
00:29 animals' capacities to understand and use language. The project "They Can Talk" is
00:33 gathering data on that very subject, though it hasn't yet published any conclusive results.
00:38 It's a field that inspires a lot of skepticism. Researcher Amritha Mallikarjan told Scientific
00:43 American that dogs can't use language in the same way as humans, and that "there is a lot
00:48 of confirmation bias. We desperately want them to be saying something to us."
00:52 But Talking Buttons have produced anecdotal evidence of creative use of words, like a
00:57 dog that asked for "ice" by combining the words "water" and "bone," as reported by Vice.
01:02 These investigations focus mostly on dogs, but veterinary behaviorist Vali Parthasarathy says
01:07 cats can learn in the same way, though good luck getting a cat to do anything.
01:12 For now, inquiries into how much intelligence animals are capable of are ongoing.
01:16 Maybe someday they can tell us themselves.
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