So, Dogs are Talking Now (And Their Owners are Inspired by TikTok)

On animal communication & the nature of language

I wouldn’t consider myself a TikTok user — and you might not either — but TikToks (or Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, or whatever iteration of them you might scroll through in the dead of night) have been worming their way into nearly every social media platform available today. And aside from being a key medium for disseminating short bits of mindless entertainment, TikToks have also come to serve a new purpose: inspire a generation of dog owners to teach their beloved canines to speak English.

Let’s be clear: these dogs are not forming their own verbal utterances in English. But in a way, they are “understanding” their owners beyond typical instructions to “sit,” “stay,” and “heel.” And these Tiktok-famous pets are able to “communicate” with their owners via a complex system of buttons — labeled with words and symbols — that speak an English word once pressed with a paw.

Bunny the sheepadoodle

To get an idea of what exactly is going on, meet Bunny the sheepadoodle, one of TikTok’s most famous talking dogs, as she has a “conversation” with her owner:

Or check out this video, where Bunny hears someone outside and alerts her owner to the presence of a stranger nearby:

And it’s not just Bunny the talking dog — there’s also the internet-famous Billi the talking cat (who very endearingly responds “want want want” to her owner asking if she wants to walk outside).

As I watch these videos, I can’t deny that these animals are genuinely impressive. The confident way that their paw smacks each button says it all. And even when I acknowledge the fact that internet videos like these are cherry-picked to represent the most impressive of the bunch, I still find myself kind of in awe.

So, how legit is all of this?

We just love talking animals

Humanity’s interest in talking animals is certainly nothing new. From Balaam’s talking donkey in the Old Testament, to the wolf grandma in Little Red Riding Hood, we love thinking about how animals could surprise us all and start spitting out words, physical incapabilities be damned.

And we can’t deny the intelligence of some animals like dolphins who are known for their self-awareness, communicative prowess, and socially complex relationships. So who’s to say that animals aren’t just being held back by their lack of adept tongues, lips, and pharynxes? What if there was a way to stir up a dormant language instinct deep inside of them?

Countless animals have been the subjects of experiments with this aim in mind, with some producing staggering results. Kanzi the bonobo is a prime example of an animal who learned to communicate via a whopping 3,000 lexigrams. A horse named Clever Hans made headlines in the early 1900s for his ability to answer math problems by tapping his hoof. And Alex the parrot (who was bought at a pet store!) even had the ability to ask questions and understand the concept of “zero.”

Alex the parrot

But when we really get down to it, we don't have many examples of animals communicating and thinking in the way that humans do. Clever Hans, for example, was found to not be sensitive to language and mathematics, but rather to humans themselves: he learned when to stop tapping his hoof by reading the subtle facial cues of his questioners. (He also had the particularly sad fate of being drafted as a military horse during World War I and was either killed in action or gobbled up by hungry soldiers.¹ Poor Hans.)

Clever Hans the horse

And while Kanzi was able to acquire knowledge of thousands of words, his “language” had limitations as well. For one, it was not recursive in the way that ours is; he had an upper limit when it came to comprehending the meaning of an utterance. (Have you ever had a conversation that involved something like “but I knew that he knew that I knew that she knew…” In theory, we could keep embedding those clauses forever. It would get annoying, but there’s no inherent limitation in our language that would stop us from decoding it.)

Kanzi the bonobo

There are some other aspects of language that are missing in the case of these talking animals: for example, humans have the ability to speak about things outside of the here and now. We can tell you about something that happened in the past, and tell you about our dreams for the future. We can also talk about things involving other people or other places. Animals have trouble grasping much outside of their immediate present.

Even the natural communication that we see in animal species do not display the same traits that human language contains. For example, while bird songs can convey important messages, they are learned and imitated at a young age, and can’t be broken up into meaningful parts. (For my birder-linguists out there, here’s a fun project for you: learn the regional accents of your local birds!)

The Audubon article linked above is worth clicking on just to see a glorious full-screen photo of this white-crowned sparrow.

So, even for these fantastic “talking” animals, their language (as we know it) is still incomplete. When we get down to it, they are really just demonstrating a complex form of mimicry rather than a legitimate language faculty.

Clive Wynne of Arizona State University (go Sun Devils) sums it up in this way: what we are witnessing when we see animals like Bunny appearing to communicate is one of the “most basic forms of learning in the animal kingdom. The dog forms an association between an action and an outcome that it desires.”² It’s not as much a language awakening as it is a natural mechanism for figuring out how to get what you want.

Regardless, there are some scientists who will advocate wholeheartedly for animals’ linguistic capacity, devoting their whole lives toward training up their furry research subjects. And there are also many who think that this research is totally futile. Psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker would say that their “talking” animals are “more analogous to the bears in the Moscow circus who are trained to ride unicycles.” The Universal Grammarian himself Noam Chomsky would concur, believing these "talking animals" to be comparable to a "flying" human launching through the air via pole vault at the Olympics.³

As for me, I don’t think that studying animals’ communicative capabilities is a completely lost cause. But rather than attempting to coax out something resembling the human language instinct (which we naturally possess with barely any effort at all), we should frame this research towards understanding the fascinating depths of animal intelligence in general. And if it yields more videos of cute animals asking to go outside… then so be it.

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1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3921203/

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/08/06/talking-dogs-aac-devices-buttons/

3. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/06/science/chimp-talk-debate-is-it-really-language.html