[kevinstubbs]

I wonder why they didn't try to use a "talk button"? Initiating the call by picking up a specific toy and shaking it seems.. I don't know, unnecessarily complicated. I don't know how true or unique it is for dogs to be able to learn to talk with buttons, but there are many YouTube videos showing how they are trained and how the dogs talk with them. Like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-xupLJc4M or this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3njWjIimd4

So a few things would be interesting to see:

1.) Does the system work better if the dogs start & stop calls with buttons instead of shaking a ball?

2.) What if you added _other_ buttons for dogs to talk to other dogs? I think it might be boring for both human and dog because there is no physical aspect, but maybe dogs barking at each other would be interesting for them?

3.) When dogs learn the system, will we observe behaviors and customs change? Maybe they will call certain dogs more often, or create new rituals to start and stop calls. Maybe they will act like children (I mean this literally) where they just turn the video on, go about their day, and once in a while say something to each other.

[hideo]

Buttons are a trained behavior. It takes training to get a dog to use those buttons and most credentialed trainers will heavily rely on rewards for training. The researchers here were trying to use an innate behavior. That makes sense because they want to check if the dog would use an innate behavior to initiate communication. If they rely on a trained behavior the dog may be doing it to get the reward that was used to train the dog and NOT doing it solely to initiate communication.

A lot of those talking buttons videos you see in my opinion are either scripted/edited or a bit of projection/reinterpretation of what’s going on in human terms. I have a dog I love to death and the lengths people including myself will go to reinterpret their behavior in human terms is incredible.

[ushakov]

dogs are already excellent communicators, they don't need buttons

and most dog owners wouldn't have the time nor the discipline to train their dog to use these buttons

[multjoy]

Dogs manipulate the world with their mouths. While they learn to do things with their paws, the most natural thing for them to do is to pick something up with their mouths. Shaking a toy is in-built behaviour.

[mwcampbell]

I wonder, though, if dogs would be satisfied communicating to each other without being able to smell each other.

[kevinstubbs]

I think it's worth experimenting with - maybe next to the video camera there can be a "dog smell" emitter. Haha.