Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?

The history of studies in which humans attempt to communicate with nonhuman animals is famously fraught with anthropomorphism, questionable ethics and just plain bad science. So then, why does Federico Rossano, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, think it’s worth revisiting this long-taboo area of research? This brief video explains how Rossano, inspired by a TikTok trend, came to believe that looking at the communication capabilities of dogs using widely available push-button devices was worthwhile. Knowing that the study would be ethically sound, with the dogs remaining in their owners’ home, and that the sample size could be far wider than the one-animal experiments performed in the past, Rossano gathered data on 152 high-performing, button-pushing dogs. As he details here, the study yielded compelling results, raising questions about dogs’ capacities not just to respond to cues, but to initiate communication.