Those pet talking buttons do not work like the YouTube pet owners think they work.

There is no question that dogs are intelligent. But Susan Hazel, an associate professor at the School of Animal and Veterinary Science at the University of Adelaide, and Eduardo J Fernandez assert, that pets cannot understand the human language. Instead, all the research indicates they are reacting from operant conditioning and cite the famous case of Clever Hans.

Pets learn that pressing a button can lead to a reward, but in cases where dogs seem to be able to string multiple buttons together to say something advanced, or where they can press the ‘right’ button when asked, it is very likely they are just responding to their owner’s body language. They almost certainly wouldn’t be able to replicate the behavior if a new pet sitter was asking the command.

Learning complex actions by operant conditioning isn’t new. The Verge writes about how good operant conditioning gets with the Clever Hans phenomenon. Hans was a 20th century horse who could apparently provide answers to simple math questions by tapping his hoof. With careful investigation, it turned out Hans wasn’t doing any arithmetic but was instead reading subtle cues from whoever was questioning him to know when to stop tapping.

Articles:

• https://www.theverge.com/21557375/bunny-the-dog-talks-researchers-animal-cognition-language-tiktok
• https://www.newsweek.com/can-dogs-communicate-us-talking-buttons-1854033