SAN DIEGO — Dogs using soundboards to communicate has been popping up all over social media. An animal communication study by UC San Diego and other institutions is testing if this actually works and how it can be used.
"We know dogs understand words, we know that we can train them with some commands, the question was, can they use this kind of symbols to communicate back to humans to ask for things?," UC San Diego Associate Professor Federico Rossano said.
The study's first findings comes from 152 animals tracked over 21 months in their own homes. It has a data set of 25,000 button presses.
Owners train their dogs what the different buttons mean and track the number of presses for each one.
"They push more 'food' and 'treat' and 'outside' and 'play' than 'I love you' or the name of the owner," Rossano said.
So far, the data shows dogs are able to communicate their needs, wants and internal states. It's a step in breaking the language barrier between dogs and humans.
"When they’re scratching the door, is it because they just want to go outside for a walk, or is it because they need to pee? Or sometimes you don't know why they're scratching the door," Rossano said.
Many pet owners are familiar with the frustration, but the results show it is possible for dogs to share that information with their owners.
The findings recently released are part of a larger study with 10,000 dogs and 700 cats in 47 countries.
If that isn't cool enough, the results go farther than dogs asking for things.
"We now have several dogs that have learned the concept “ouch” to communicate about pain," Rossano said. "We were getting clips saying 'belly ouch' and then they would puke, or saying 'ear ouch' and then they go to veterinarian they have an ear infection."
Rossano said mixed-breed dogs are performing the best in the study and younger dogs are learning the quickest. Each dog in the study has a different number of buttons. Rossano said most have about 20, but there's two dogs with 150 buttons right now.
This is just the beginning of trying to learn what dogs are capable of.
"Can we actually understand what they're excited about, what they're frustrated from, can they communicate about what they are experiencing?," Rossano said.
If you want to test your pet's skills, the study is open to more participants. It's not limited to just dogs, cats and domestic animals are accepted too.
You can also check out the Dog Cognition Lab at UC San Diego.
"If participants don't have buttons, but they still want to bring the dog to be, you know, playing some games and for us to tell you how smart your dog is," Rossano said.
The sign-up link for the study can be found here.