Photo: Pauline Loroy | Unsplash
A global study that originated at the University of California San Diego’s Department of Cognitive Science and that has now extended to 47 different countries around the world is studying dog communication. As part of the study, owners have been training their dogs to “tell” them what they want by mashing buttons with their paws to express words in various human languages. The purpose of the global study is to determine whether the animals are actually communicating or if they’re just forming behaviors to secure treats for themselves. An interpretation of one video researcher Federico Rossano evaluated let him to say, “At the very least, this tells me that they understand what those buttons mean because they could have pressed anything else and that they are capable of understanding that the human needs to perceive what’s going on in order to respond and to communicate about what they need, which I think is amazing,” Rossano said. “It’s like a child telling you that they’re hungry versus just crying. And I think being able to communicate your needs and what you want, I think it’s very powerful.”
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