TORONTO -- A TikTok account featuring an intelligent one-year-old poodle-mix named Bunny, has amassed 5.7 million followers on the platform after its owner began posting short video clips of the dog using a 鈥渓anguage-board鈥� to have human-like conversations.
Bunny is able to communicate with her owner by using her paw to step on different buttons that represent specific words, such as 鈥減lay,鈥� 鈥済o,鈥� and 鈥渨alk.鈥� The dog can even form short phrases that are up to five words long.
The idea to start using an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) board for dogs came from speech therapist Christiana Hunger, who was inspired to try the technique with her own dog in October 2019.
Writing on , Hunger said: "When I brought my new puppy Stella home, I realized she demonstrated many of the same pre-linguistic communication skills as toddlers do right before they start talking, which is when I was struck with an idea!"
Bunny鈥檚 success on TikTok has since caught the attention of cognitive scientists who have begun monitoring the dog鈥檚 progress.
The scientists鈥� observation of Bunny is part of the , a project led by scientists from CleverPet and the University of California San Diego's Comparative Cognition Lab.
Scientists hope to use their findings to enhance an AAC prototype of the language board that is now being produced by the company .
The research will attempt to determine how and to what degree animals can express themselves in language-like ways.
In an interview with Business Insider, Bunny鈥檚 owner, Alexis Devine, remarked on a time when her dog used the language board to alert her owner to a piece of foxtail grass logged in her paw.
"Any time she's able to tell me she's in pain, specifically where she's in pain, I'm totally gobsmacked," Devine said. "It鈥榮 incredible!鈥�
