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00:00you ever wonder what your dog is thinking
00:21water now some dog owners say they know
00:28thanks to buttons that seem to give dogs the ability to talk it's like how is
00:37this even possible some dogs are saying so much that scientists have decided we
00:45gotta study them we need to look into this they've set up the largest animal
00:55communication study in history with thousands of dogs from around the world
01:04what we want to see is where can we take this and how far can dogs go we know that
01:10our bond with dogs is incredibly tight but could we really teach them to speak
01:15our language so you have dogs that can translate on behalf of other dogs to
01:21humans right that is mind-blowing she knows what she's saying she's
01:26communicating with me
01:30couldn't it just be owners reading too much into things what's really going on
01:37here are they just pushing our buttons working dogs the whole phenomenon of
01:55talking dogs starts with one very special dog check this out
02:02this is stella it's late but stella isn't ready for bed
02:09stella appears to be talking you want to go to the park
02:19it's a little late to go to the park
02:22this video has been sped up a little but otherwise nothing's been edited in or out
02:29do you want to go for a walk instead
02:36yes
02:38what
02:40okay
02:42okay
02:44okay we'll go for a walk
02:46let's get your leash on
02:49leash on
02:51stella has been taught to use word buttons
02:56walk
02:57her owner christina hunger can record different words on each of the buttons
03:02and by using them stella became known as the world's first talking dog
03:08what
03:10and this is amazing so this is this is the board this is where it all happened
03:14that's right how many buttons are there in total
03:17there's 48 on this board right now like why would you do this like what would you make
03:22you think you could do something like this
03:24so i was a speech language pathologist i worked with kids every day who used communication devices
03:29to talk and then when i brought stella home i just saw how much she was already communicating
03:34with her gestures her nonverbal language her barks and whines and it got me thinking maybe
03:41if they had a different way to say words other than verbal speech that they could say it too
03:46so christina got her some buttons to try
03:50i wasn't just training her to push a button and giving her a treat
03:54never once did that i was showing her how to use it in the right context and seeing if she would learn
04:00even when stella became interested in the buttons it took a while before she managed to actually press one
04:07you're so close stella
04:12but finally she cracked it and the next morning christina caught it on camera
04:18let's go outside
04:20i i was very excited
04:22and then when she went outside she went to the bathroom right away
04:27she was using a word appropriately and functionally
04:31i just jumped into gear and found more buttons and taught more concepts
04:38christina
04:39can you ask her questions and she'll answer using these is that the way usually it works or
04:43so normally she just uses them completely independently like when she has something that she wants to say
04:48she'll come over and use her buttons or if i ask like what she wants to do she'll normally answer with an activity
04:55if i ask her when she wants to do something it will always be now
04:59as stella started to use her buttons more christina began sharing her videos online
05:08we left our apartment one day and we set up a camera just to see you know what she would do while we were gone
05:16i had never heard her made a sound like that
05:26it was heartbreaking
05:31stella blew up online and her videos turned her into a social media phenomenon
05:41we're joined now by christina hunger a speech pathologist in san diego owner of the very clever
05:48stella
05:49okay
05:50so christina what does stella say the most
05:52she definitely says outside the most
05:54she absolutely loves being outside
05:56okay
05:57as news of stella and her word button spread
06:00no stand up
06:01others so-called talking dogs
06:03have flooded social media with their seemingly amazing feats of communication
06:08these dogs seem to be using our words
06:15but is that enough to say that they're talking
06:19do they really understand what they're saying
06:23or is their button pushing just random
06:29i love you too cop
06:31i love you too
06:33to find out i've come to see federico rasano
06:38director of the comparative cognition lab at the university of california san diego
06:43you were running the largest dog study i don't know how do you even describe it what are you doing
06:48it is the largest citizen science study on animal communication ever attempted
06:53right
06:54we have more than 10 000 participants from 47 countries and these participants have been training their dogs for years
07:02that's a huge study
07:04it's a huge study
07:05but at first federico didn't want to have anything to do with button pressing dogs
07:10how can we know that this is actually happening and there's no queuing that the owner is not just trained
07:16and then recorded the clip so that you know you can show it after all right
07:19we know that you could train a pigeon to open boxes so it's like there's things you could do if you just do it enough times
07:25right
07:26but despite federico's concerns about social media
07:29he saw some clips that he just couldn't ignore
07:32i start looking at some of these clips
07:34you start noticing something that is a little different from what you expect
07:38let me just show you one of these clips
07:40mad
07:42why are you mad?
07:44why mad?
07:46why mad?
07:57where is your ouch?
07:59where ouch?
08:01stranger
08:03in your ear?
08:05where stranger
08:07where are you stranger?
08:14in your paw?
08:20let me see your paw
08:25okay i'm gonna put this down
08:27this is this stranger in her paw she's got a mat between her ouch toes
08:32so they seem to be able to kind of do some back and forth with the humans
08:37and there seems to be the ability to put more than one using more than one word at the same time
08:43in a sequence kind of like a sentence
08:44to combine ideas right
08:46and so when you look at this it's pretty impressive
08:49we are seeing from different dogs things that could be really interesting if true
08:55the trouble is past efforts to teach animals to use our language have been incredibly controversial
09:08which color? that one? the blue one
09:12the way it was done was basically a researcher would get one animal
09:17and then train this animal to learn for example sign language or to learn how to use other devices
09:25sometimes it looked like something extraordinary
09:29but if you only have one animal it's very hard to tell how that came about
09:33or what that really means from the perspective of cognition and what that means about how they're thinking
09:40after several studies focused on one or two animals taken out of their natural habitats
09:45and with concern about researchers over interpreting results
09:49the entire field of research was called into question
09:52so when the button dogs emerged on social media
09:57many of Federico's colleagues thought he'd be crazy to get involved
10:01I had scientists calling me saying
10:04do you know what you're getting yourself into?
10:07you might actually lose your job because of what you're doing
10:10but this study would be different
10:13based on more than just one or two highly trained subjects
10:17much, much more
10:21thousands and thousands of dogs
10:24to help make the study as legitimate as it could be
10:29given its scope Federico asked Amalia Bastos
10:33a researcher in animal cognition to join him
10:36where can we take this and how far can dogs go?
10:38we need to actually test things out empirically to find out what's going on
10:42Federico and Amalia have been recruiting participants from across the world
10:46while some are manually recording data for use in the study
10:53many participants are using buttons that automatically record what words are pressed and when
10:59every time a button is pressed that goes straight into the app
11:04and then we can download through the app the kind of data that has been collected
11:09to properly investigate this whole phenomenon Federico first needs to check that the dogs actually understand the words on the buttons when they hear them
11:24good boy
11:25yeah
11:26I thought I might see a study in their lab room but it's totally empty
11:32we actually don't bring dogs into the lab
11:35dogs are trained in their own homes and we go to
11:38people's homes to actually collect data
11:40why is it important to do a study where the dog lives?
11:43you need to imagine like how do you behave when you go to the doctor
11:48when you are in your office versus how do you behave when you're home
11:52and how do you feel comfortable, natural, not necessarily under pressure
11:59and I think it creates an environment where you can actually show your abilities if this is there
12:05I want to show you something that is actually one of the studies that we've been doing
12:09this is Makai
12:11you're so calm
12:12hmm
12:13Federico and Amalia need to test whether a word generated by a button
12:17means the same thing to a dog
12:19as when that same word is spoken by a person
12:22he's having some water
12:25because when we say words we add all sorts of extra details
12:29pitch, volume, body language
12:31you are the messiest drinker
12:34but a word from a button is the same every time
12:38the first study had to be
12:40do the dogs that are trained with these buttons
12:43understand the meaning of the words that are associated with it
12:46and can we show that they would respond not just to their owners
12:50but they would respond to others pushing those buttons
12:53this is kind trial number four
12:57the experimenter wears headphones
13:00so she can't hear what word button she will press
13:03and the owners are blindfolded
13:05so no one can give away any clues
13:07and then you see the dog goes straight for the toy basket
13:14retrieves the ball
13:16like let's play
13:18and so it's contextually appropriate
13:22with respect to what button had just been pressed
13:25it's the simplest possible test
13:3158 other dogs were also tested
13:34Chrissy? Chrissy?
13:36outside
13:38and the results showed that dogs respond appropriately
13:41to the play and outside buttons with no other cues
13:45just as they would respond to those words spoken directly by a human
13:49that was critical for us because if they did not respond in a way that would suggest they understand it
13:56then there's no point in moving forward with any other research
14:00so it's now clear that dogs can respond to at least some button words
14:06the next question is how well can dogs use them?
14:13but first
14:14it's massive
14:15how many words does the average dog seem to know?
14:18I'm here at a dog show and I'm not expecting to find any talking dogs here
14:35but it's probably a pretty good place to understand how they understand us
14:39hello
14:41you're so cute
14:43I'm here to meet Sophie Jacques
14:46Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology
14:49at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia
14:52we're at a dog show
14:55what can a developmental psychologist learn from studying dogs?
14:58so I study language development in children
15:01and the differences between dogs and babies in learning language
15:06as well as the similarities can tell us a lot about what's going on in both kinds of species
15:11we talk to dogs in the ways that are very similar to how we talk with babies
15:17when measuring language ability in infants
15:20researchers often use word lists
15:23filled out by parents who report what words they believe their baby understands
15:27Sophie produced the same kind of list
15:30but for doggies
15:31so this is a list of words that we developed to measure the same thing in dogs
15:38so we figured that if parents were really good at picking out what words they think their babies know
15:45maybe dog owners would be
15:46you're telling me this is a list of words that dogs know?
15:49yes
15:50this is a list of words that dogs know
15:52it's massive
15:53in general dog owners are reporting that their dogs know about 80 to 85 words
16:01that's a huge number of words
16:03I mean when you think about the average one year old or maybe two year old
16:06it's the list is about the same isn't it?
16:08yeah so a one year old parents report they respond to about 80 words
16:13so about the same number of words
16:14wow
16:15but there are big differences in the list
16:16most of those words are objects they're nouns
16:18for dogs most of those words are commands or actions
16:23so sit, stay, come
16:25whereas with babies it might be bottle, mummy
16:29and words we think of as objects a dog might relate to differently
16:34they'll recognize words like car
16:37so do you want to go for a car ride?
16:39right
16:40now the question is do they recognize the word car or mat as an object or as a place to go?
16:45they hear car and they go to the car?
16:47yes
16:48yes that's right
16:49it's an action word
16:50sit
16:51with so many words that dogs seem to respond to
16:53good boy
16:54how close could they be to actually using our language?
16:57so what would it take to convince you that a dog can talk?
17:02well a language is more than knowing a hundred words or a thousand words
17:06it's more than just knowing words
17:08language has purpose
17:09it has meaning
17:10it has structures
17:12it is a system of symbols that is organized in a very precise way
17:17right
17:18good job
17:19just because dogs respond to lots of different words in a particular language
17:22good man
17:23ready ready ready
17:24over
17:25woohoo
17:26doesn't necessarily mean they comprehend that language
17:29that's so good
17:31and even when they're pressing buttons correctly
17:34it's hard to know how much they understand
17:37good boy
17:38you gonna try not to bark at stuff today?
17:40oh yeah
17:46can you go to bed?
17:47this is Rohan
17:49yeah good boy
17:50Amalia's 23 month old Australian Shepherd
17:53ready? break
17:55button
17:56creak
17:57yes
17:58oh go get it
18:02Jake
18:03yeah
18:04love you
18:05good boy
18:06go to bed
18:07yeah
18:08so what we saw looks like a conversation where the dog understood what it was saying
18:13and we had it back and forth
18:14and actual fact these were trained interactions where the dog was actually just trained to press
18:19the buttons as a trick
18:20button
18:21that's the one
18:22that's the one
18:23that's the one
18:24he doesn't actually know what that button means
18:29that could have had a bird chirp or I could have had you know siren sound
18:35it could have been literally anything and he would have performed the behavior exactly the same way
18:39love you love you
18:41love you
18:42you know the fact that they're human language words is completely arbitrary
18:47love you
18:48it's just associative learning
18:50Rohan has learned to associate an action like pressing a button with an outcome like getting a treat
18:56a treat
18:58that's so good
18:59it's known as associative learning or conditioning
19:02but it doesn't mean he knows what the words treat or thanks or love you actually mean
19:08everything in life starts through associative learning and actually humans learn through associative learning
19:12good boy
19:13associative learning is common to pretty much all animals
19:17freak
19:18and it doesn't require any sort of complex cognition that we should be impressed by
19:22great
19:23you could easily teach a mouse to press buttons
19:27okay you got that one
19:28and that's the big problem
19:30just because they can press buttons that say words
19:32doesn't necessarily mean that the dogs have any real understanding of what those words mean
19:37right
19:39so how much of all this button pressing could really just be random
19:43I love you
19:51in principle the dog could just be spamming the sound board
19:54just coming there touching buttons randomly
19:56if it's random we should stop doing this research right why are you looking into something that's completely random
20:09or what if the dogs are just pressing buttons that are easy to reach
20:13what can happen of course is that the dog might just end up pushing for example these two buttons that are close to each other
20:19just because they are adjacent to each other and it's just easy for them
20:24and so it is very important for us to know not just which buttons they have participants have but also how they are laid out
20:32so that we can for example run analysis to see the dogs seem to be actually doing something intentionally
20:38but after two years of analyzing over 10 million button presses by thousands of dogs
20:45Federico is seeing clear patterns emerge
20:49what are some of the most common words that dogs are saying
20:52so outside play and food the size of the water tells you something
20:56treat of course water
20:59scritches
21:01walk
21:02want
21:03so part of the idea is that you know the words that I use the most are words that make sense for a dog
21:08and again so some of these things they don't use a lot
21:13other words that might not be quiet in line with what we expect like training or mad or friend
21:22so on the whole button use is not random
21:27if it was random you would just have all the buttons that you have on the sound board have an equal probability of being pressed
21:34okay some dogs press an outside button when they want to go outside
21:41should we be impressed?
21:43in principle there is no difference between pushing the buttons and saying outside
21:48and trying to tell you by scratching on the door that they want to go outside
21:53it's another way of communicating
21:56so is it possible for dogs to do more than just communicate in these simplest of ways?
22:01outside
22:02what would it mean for them to use language?
22:04all animals communicate
22:06all animals communicate and can understand communication
22:10but not all communication is language
22:13Arick Kirschenbaum studies animal communication at the University of Cambridge in England
22:18I think really communication becomes language
22:21when you cross that boundary from a signal that manipulates other individuals
22:27to a system by which information is exchanged between individuals who understand
22:35that their conversation partner is also participating in that conversation
22:41could dogs and humans cross that boundary and engage in a deeper exchange?
22:48it's hard to imagine our dogs actually speaking to us
22:51but we have to remember that they evolved with us over the course of thousands of years
22:56and that would have changed their behavior in some pretty profound ways
22:59all dogs evolved from wolves
23:05their wild ancestors
23:07more than 10,000 years ago
23:09some wolves were taken in by humans
23:11and domesticated
23:12over generations spent living with and around us
23:16they changed in different ways
23:18according to how we bred them
23:20we selected traits that we valued
23:23leading to breeds that were smaller and cuter
23:27or faster and slimmer
23:30or bigger and stronger
23:33and of course over time
23:35we favored dogs that could communicate well with us
23:39dogs that were good at understanding what we're trying to say
23:43and a small percentage of dogs worldwide
23:46really do seem to have an extraordinary grasp of our words
23:50take Gaia for instance
23:54a six-year-old border collier
23:56Isabella Ruiz is her owner
24:03while most dogs are good at learning action words like sit and stay
24:06not many seem to recognize the names of more than a few objects
24:11but that's not the case with Gaia
24:13Gaia has 215 toys now
24:16she knows all of them by name
24:19it's a lot of toys now for us to remember
24:22so we did a catalogue of the toys to remember their names
24:27but Gaia always knows the toys
24:29so yeah, I think her memory is better than ours
24:34Isabella enrolled Gaia in a study called
24:36the Genius Dog Challenge
24:38run by Claudia Fugatza
24:40she's traveled here all the way from Hungary
24:43where she works at one of the world's leading canine research centers
24:46Gaia is one of the what we call the gifted word learner dogs
24:52and these are dogs that have a very special talent
24:56for learning the name of toys
24:58and they learn very fast
25:01only a few dogs around the world seem to have this capacity
25:05hello
25:07hi Gaia
25:08hello Carol
25:09she's here to put Gaia to the test
25:11thank you
25:13thank you
25:14she wants to find out whether Gaia's cognitive skills
25:17might go beyond learning names and recall
25:20coffee
25:21can Gaia work out what a toy might be called
25:23based only on how she plays with it?
25:26thank you
25:27Gaia knows that tug and fetch are games she can play
25:32new toys
25:34and last week she was given two new toys
25:37one to tug and one to fetch
25:40so this one
25:42I play like this
25:43Isabella hasn't given the toys any names
25:46and hasn't said the words tug or fetch when playing with them
25:49and this one
25:50I've been playing like this
25:52but I don't say the name of the categories so
25:55yeah
25:56is Gaia smart enough to work out which is a fetch toy
25:59and which is a tug toy?
26:01good girl
26:02so are they able to sort those items into the tug or the fetch category just based on the way you play?
26:12good girl
26:30good girl
26:31you got theten
26:32good girl
26:33good girl
26:34kaia
26:35Gary, where's the Thug? Where's the Thug?
26:51Good girl! Good girl!
26:55Well, I have to say, I had no idea how this would go,
26:59but that was really, really exciting.
27:01She was able to assign this toy to the named category
27:05without ever having heard that name paired with that toy.
27:09Totally, I believe this is a big step
27:11in our understanding of dogs' minds.
27:14What Gaia has done seems different
27:17from just simple conditioning or associative learning.
27:20For sure, Gaia could not have associated the name,
27:25Fetch or Thug, to the specific item
27:28because she has never heard that name
27:31while seeing that toy or while playing with that toy.
27:34This is not possible.
27:35She could not have learned that this way.
27:38It seems some dogs can understand
27:41that a word can refer to a whole category of objects.
27:44It doesn't necessarily have to refer to one specific thing.
27:48Go! Yay!
27:50But that's just words that they're hearing.
27:52The owners are not allowed to speak to the dog,
27:55point or gesture at the dog, nothing at all.
27:58Could some dogs be genius enough
28:00to use their word buttons in totally new contexts?
28:04Oh, hi! Do you need help?
28:06Do you need help?
28:19Meet Parker.
28:20She is a beagle cross,
28:22and she is all about using those word buttons.
28:25Water.
28:27So Parker is a bit atypical.
28:29When we first got them,
28:31it took her about 30 seconds, maybe not even,
28:34to press her first button.
28:36And by the end of that kind of evening,
28:39she had pressed at least experimentally
28:41all six of them.
28:42Snug snuggle.
28:44You want snuggle? Come here.
28:46Parker is being tested by Amalia,
28:49Federico's colleague,
28:50with something called the impossible task.
28:53It's designed to see if a dog
28:55who has a help button on a soundboard
28:57will use it in a situation
28:58it has never encountered before.
29:00So with most of the buttons that dogs have,
29:04like food or play or walk,
29:06these are simple associations
29:08that are related to one particular context.
29:10Help.
29:11Help is interesting
29:12because it's a little bit more general
29:14than a lot of the simpler buttons
29:16that these dogs might have.
29:17Sit.
29:18Good girl. Wait there.
29:19So the way that the study is set up
29:23is we have this mat on the floor here
29:25and it's got a Tupperware in the middle.
29:27First, the owners give the dogs opportunities
29:29over four different trials
29:30to obtain a food reward
29:31from inside the Tupperware.
29:32And at that point, the lid is open.
29:34And at all these stages,
29:36the dog can knock off the lid
29:37and eat the food inside the Tupperware
29:38without much difficulty.
29:40Until in the very final trial,
29:42the fifth trial,
29:43the Tupperware is completely locked.
29:44and that's the point
29:45at which the dog might need help
29:47to access the food.
29:48The owners are not allowed
29:49to speak to their dog,
29:51point or gesture at the dog,
29:52look at their dog,
29:53nothing at all.
29:57I didn't know what Parker would do
29:59in that circumstance,
30:00whether she would use the buttons or not.
30:05I can see she's immediately gone to Sasha
30:06and she's climbed onto Sasha's back
30:07trying to get her attention.
30:09But what we're interested in is
30:11can these dogs then make that leap
30:13and use a word.
30:19She presses help, look,
30:20and then she looks to Sasha.
30:23Parker had never before been presented
30:25with this scenario
30:26and so had never used the words
30:27look or help in this context.
30:34So because it's the very first time
30:35that they've seen this,
30:36it tells us two things.
30:37It tells us that behavior wasn't trained
30:38and it tells us that the dog
30:40is having to think about
30:42what this requires from them
30:44in terms of communication
30:45to their owner
30:46and that they need to generalize
30:47a button that they've not used
30:48in this context before.
30:51It seems from this experiment
30:53that Parker understands
30:54that the word help
30:55can be used in a broad range
30:57of scenarios,
30:58revealing a level of cognition
31:00beyond just simple association.
31:02as well as using words in new untrained ways,
31:15a huge step would be
31:17if dogs were using words
31:18to do more than just ask for things.
31:20What we're actually interested in
31:23is whether dogs might be able
31:24to use the sound boards
31:26not just as a vending machine
31:27where they're requesting things
31:28from humans
31:29but actually understand it
31:30as a communicative device.
31:33So humans do not just request things,
31:36humans can inform.
31:38It's a thing that humans
31:39do all the time.
31:40Toddlers start doing it,
31:41they will point at the moon
31:42and say moon
31:43and you know,
31:44they're not requesting the moon,
31:45they're just letting you know
31:46the moon is there.
31:49Parker uses the buttons
31:50to narrate a decent amount.
31:52She has narrated me watering the plants
31:55quite a bit.
31:56She'll narrate also things
31:57she does sometimes.
32:02She's pressed settle before
32:04and then just gone into her bed
32:06and lie down.
32:09She didn't get anything from me for it.
32:11She just pressed settle
32:12and then she settled.
32:13Of course,
32:15it's impossible
32:16to know for sure
32:17whether Parker
32:18really was commenting
32:19on what she was doing.
32:21But other dogs
32:22like Copper,
32:23a three and a half year old Labrador,
32:25also seem to be using buttons
32:27to do more than just make requests.
32:29Outside pool.
32:30Outside pool.
32:32Outside pool,
32:33maybe tomorrow.
32:40Outside pool later.
32:42Outside pool.
32:43Later.
32:47Sad.
32:48Oh my goodness.
32:49Copper.
32:51It looks like Copper
32:52was using her buttons
32:53to express emotion.
32:55But of course,
32:56we don't know for sure.
32:58An animal could learn
32:59that pressing the sad button
33:01gets attention.
33:03And once they've learnt that,
33:04they can manipulate
33:06these different concepts
33:07in quite complex ways
33:09without understanding,
33:10there's a semantic meaning
33:12behind it.
33:16Outside pool later.
33:21From the data he's receiving
33:22from button boards,
33:23Federico tells me that,
33:24according to their owners,
33:26dogs are using buttons
33:27to do a lot more
33:28than just ask for things.
33:30This is human responses?
33:32This is what the human tells you
33:34when the buttons are pushed,
33:36what they think the dog is doing.
33:38So it's interesting for us
33:40because you would expect
33:41most of the things
33:42to be a request for action,
33:43and you expect some informing
33:45or attention-seeking,
33:46sharing thoughts and feelings.
33:48Can they talk about emotions?
33:49It happens 5% of the time,
33:51but it's happening,
33:52and maybe we should
33:53look more into it.
33:5650% of button presses
33:57were recorded as requests,
33:59but there are other categories
34:01where dogs seem to be doing
34:02stuff that I find shocking.
34:06And this, to me,
34:07is one of the most fascinating ones,
34:09speaking for others.
34:11What happens sometimes
34:13is that you have multiple learners
34:15in the household,
34:16so there might be like two dogs
34:17or three dogs.
34:18Okay.
34:19And one is proficient
34:20on what can use the buttons,
34:21and the other one doesn't.
34:23And so you have the one
34:24that can use it
34:25is actually telling the humans
34:27about what the other one wants.
34:29And so they might tell you,
34:30for example,
34:31the other one wants water
34:32or the other one needs help.
34:34So you have dogs
34:35that can translate
34:36on behalf of other dogs
34:38to humans.
34:39Correct.
34:40That is mind-blowing.
34:41And that's why
34:42it's very exciting for us
34:43because even though it's fair,
34:45imagine what it could mean.
34:48For now,
34:49these reports are certainly
34:50tantalizing,
34:51but it's just what owners
34:52believe their dogs
34:53are communicating.
34:54Knowing for certain
34:56what a dog means
34:57when it uses words
34:58or what it thinks
34:59when it hears one
35:00is far harder.
35:04And it's got some scientists wondering,
35:06maybe we should look
35:07in their brains.
35:08So right now,
35:09I'm putting on the electrodes.
35:21In Budapest, Hungary,
35:22Mariana Boros wants to find out
35:24what's happening inside a dog's brain
35:27when it hears words it knows.
35:29For most people,
35:32we have a mental representation
35:34of things from the external words.
35:36So we have a mental representation
35:38of an object,
35:39some kind of a memory
35:40of that thing.
35:41We can imagine it in a way
35:44that we hear the word ball,
35:46we will see in our mental imagery
35:48a ball.
35:49Mariana wants to test
35:51whether dog's brains
35:52might work similarly.
35:54When a dog hears a word,
35:57does it conjure up an image
35:58of that thing in its head?
36:00To find out,
36:02she's going to study
36:03the brain activity of Demi,
36:05an 11-year-old Swiss shepherd.
36:07So right now,
36:08I'm putting on the electrodes
36:09on Demi's head.
36:10That's what measure
36:11the brain signal.
36:12Demi's owner,
36:13Timmy,
36:14has brought in some of Demi's toys.
36:15Then Demi hears a message
36:16telling her what toy
36:17she's about to see.
36:18Demi,
36:19see the telephone.
36:20sometimes,
36:45But sometimes,
36:46Timmy shows a different toy.
36:47The idea is that
36:48if the dog sees a different object,
36:49object it should be somehow surprised and this surprise effect should be
36:54visible in the EEG signal what we can see here is that if a dog saw an object
37:06that matched the word that he just heard this is the response that we get but when
37:10we violate their expectations so we show a different object then we get a more
37:15positive response in the EEG signal Mariana believes that this difference in the signals
37:21indicates that dogs have mental representations of objects we can claim based on this study that
37:28when they hear the name of an object they activate something the so-called memory of this object so
37:36we think that the dog is actually surprised when it sees a different thing but it is surprised
37:42because it has an expectation and because it understands the meaning of that word
37:49that's a qualitatively different way of using language as opposed to associative learning
37:58so yes i would say there's a possibility they they understand words similarly to us
38:05of course this is still an interpretation
38:07but if dogs do understand words in similar ways to us
38:13could they start putting them together and using them in more complex ways
38:20to find out we need to look at the dogs that use a lot of buttons
38:25outside
38:26okay we can go outside first come on girl
38:32the holy grail would be to find dogs that are capable of using their limited words to express
38:38new ideas that they don't have buttons for
38:42an ability known as productivity
38:45linguistic productivity is absolutely central to the way that humans do language
38:50but what makes humans special is that we can communicate to each other anything any concept
38:57so that cognitive ability is very very powerful and very very rare in the animal world
39:04in order to look at productivity you need to have dogs that can combine at least two buttons
39:09as of yesterday we have 790 dogs in our pool that do multi-button combinations
39:15maybe there's going to be one two three five ten twenty that actually have the ability to kind of refer
39:21to things that you don't have a word for or by combining other signals we have anecdotal reports
39:26from some of them that they seem to be doing it
39:32so stella has a beach button we used to live right by the beach she loved going to the beach we went
39:36almost every day right and when it broke we took it off because we had to fix it and she sniffed right
39:42where the empty spot was where her beach button should be and then she said help water outside
39:56so she used water and outside to say beach because she didn't have the beach button available to her
40:03so she's coming up with new concepts combining words the way that people do right to express ideas
40:08exactly so she it was like her own synonym for beach it's oh i can't say beach so i'll say water
40:14outside that's incredible yeah did you freak out yeah definitely freaked out it's impossible to know
40:22whether christina's interpretation is correct but clips like these are helpful for federico to highlight
40:28possible areas for future research this is the reason i'm doing it even though people told me i
40:37might lose my job um it's because i've seen things like that i've seen animals putting together two or
40:43three buttons in ways that look like that we're producing sentences but of course you should not stop
40:49there because that thing could have been trained okay we'll go to the beach it might look like productivity
40:55but we don't know for sure that it is i do find interesting that she pressed buttons that are near
40:59beach so i would have loved to know if she would have done the same if say beach was on the other
41:07side of the soundboard although stella had never before used those buttons together testing what she
41:13meant by them after the event is impossible still it's a really interesting sign
41:20oh are you very excited
41:24so can dogs talk i think parker can communicate using english language words do you want to do training
41:34if you want to call that talking great i say that stella talks because she's using words to communicate
41:52the fact that it's not a trained behavior and that it's independent and that she can use words to
41:59mean a lot of different things indicates language not just a conditioned trick it's not surprising that
42:07owners with their close relationships and strong communicative bonds might feel that their dogs are
42:12talking but scientific understanding of their linguistic capabilities is still in its early days
42:22we're very much at the beginning of what we're doing and we need to be ready to collect data for years
42:28and years and years and years and to me the exciting part is that maybe you can see something that
42:35nobody else could see before because we just didn't have access to all this data
42:41we're really at the start of this journey of understanding animal cognition animal communication
42:47and where that lies on that spectrum between language and non-language
42:51language where where where by are you asking where you're going you're going to go see natalie
43:08no one believes dogs will ever reach our level with language that's clear does it matter if the
43:13sentence you're saying is grammatical or not as long as you're getting your point across and you're
43:17actually benefiting from that to weigh communication i don't think so whether dogs are using language
43:24or not with a new tool in their communication kit and access to our words it's possible that the close
43:31bonds between humans and dogs could become even closer
43:45so
43:47so
43:51so
43:53so
43:57so
43:59so
44:01so
44:03so
44:05You
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