Billi speaks. (via billispeaks)
billi want food
billi get food later?
billi want food!
billi mad.
billi want drugs.
okay but this method of teaching dogs and cats a way of communication is frankly astounding. Watch more of billieâs videos and Hunger4Words (the creator of this sytem) and itâs pretty stunning. yes, thereâs a lot of wishful thinking because cats and dogs donât have quite as complex brains when it comes to language, but the fact remains these animals are a rudimentary form of bilingual. they have their own language (body/scents/vocal) and now theyâve learned to use a very basic form of our language. iâve seen so many people, linguists even, dismiss that this is just more complex reward association but i mean. dogs have been with us for about 32 thousand years. theyâve evolved alongside us for that long. they are honed in on us. hell, even cats have been our close companions for at least 8 thousand years. that is more than enough time for either one of them to grasp the very basic concepts of our words (especially considering cats literally talk/meow because we talk. that is not a normal thing they do when wild/feral).
so yeah. this is fucking cool.
Once youâve seen their videos (and Bunnyâs as well) it becomes impossible to call it a complex reward association thing. They stop rewarding the animals at a certain point. It just becomes a means of communication. Unless answering a dogâs question qualifies as a reward but then at that point I think weâve stopped dismissing this system and instead revealed that human language is just a complex reward association system.
YES THANK YOU. Iâve been obsessing over animals participating in this experiment for months and none of my friends are as interested in it as me, or they want to dismiss it as wishful thinking.
But even if you want to think of it as an action-reward system, I feel like there are enough videos that evidence that itâs not just about that to the animals involved, which â yeah, okay, wishful thinking, BUT! Billiâs owner posted a TikTok recently where she asks Billi what she wants â a question Billi comprehends â and Billi just responds âHappy Billiâ.
The first time in the history of cats that the answer to this question has been nothing đč
Also, Iâm fascinated with the fact that three of the dogs who are using AAC to communicate have demonstrated an understanding of water in the abstract. Typically, a handler will model the word âwaterâ with water in the bowl. I remember the first time I saw that Christina Hunger video where Stella accidentally broke her âbeachâ button â it wasnât immediately able to be fixed, so the spot on the board remained vacant. Stella strung together the words âhelp water outsideâ after looking at the place where the âbeachâ button should be. Up until then, for me, it was just kind of a neat thing.
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A post shared by Christina Hunger, MA, CCC-SLP (@hunger4words) on Nov 11, 2019 at 12:47pm PST
Then Bunny displayed several uses water in the abstract. When her owner declined to take her to the beach, Bunny tried to get around the no by asking instead âplease water walkâ. (Canât find this video right now though I promise I tried.)
She also responded to high tide flowing beneath their house by saying âwater soundâ, and later the same night when it rained, âwater outsideâ.
Same day. Different references to water related events. Sheâs generalizingđ„ș #doggyanthem #fyp #dogsoftiktok #bunnythedog
Thereâs also Polly on TikTok, who has used âwaterâ and âplayâ while outside, presumably to get some hose or pool time in. She also strung together the words âwater treat,â resulting in a homemade pupsicle.
I guess you could say she was a...hot dog đ„buh dum tssđ„ #canineaac #aac #dogsoftiktok #cockapoo #pupsicle #hunger4words #theycantalk #talkin
Itâs just neat to me that they recognize water as water in different states (ice, the ocean, in a bowl, rain) enough to use it to indicate things they want or hear or see! I think Bunny also called a baby seal a âwater hippoâ at one point (because she has a button for her squeaky gray hippo toy). Like, Bunny has pretty much figured out times of day and is now trying to figure out âyesterdayâ in relation to âtodayâ and âtomorrowâ. How do you model âyesterdayâ to a dog??? Sheâs also self-reported injuries to her paw three times â two of those were barbed foxtails embedded between her toes that her owner didnât know about!
Definitely check out the other participants if youâre interested! Bunny has learned the most words so far, probably, but Billi has a lot, too.
They have also done experiments with horses, who generally do not understand verbal language as well as dogs and cats, due perhaps to their relatively limited vocalizations. (Horses communicate primarily through body language).
They were able to train horses to ask for a blanket when they were too cold and ask for their blanket to be removed when they were too hot.
Now, in this case there is a direct reward (temperature correction), but they were given the choice between blanket on, blanket off, and no change, and chose what an outside observer would consider to be the correct option. (And furthermore, it demonstrated the basic understanding that blankets are, indeed, warm).
So even in animals that struggle to understand more than a handful of words, symbolic communication still works, which demonstrates that rather than being âstupid,â horses are merely non-verbal/non-talking and perfectly capable of communicating when given an alternative means to do so.
