Purrs, meows, and soulful stares are part of daily life for many pet owners. Recent developments in animal communication research are now shedding light on whether pets can truly express complex ideas such as love.
Some pet owners have started using soundboards—devices with electronic buttons—to help their animals communicate by pressing buttons associated with specific words. Videos featuring dogs and cats using these boards to “talk” have gained widespread attention on social media, sparking debate about whether these pets understand what they are saying or if the phenomenon is simply a trick.
Federico Rossano, a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego, became interested in this trend after seeing examples like Christina Hunger’s dog Stella, who reportedly learned over 50 words and created multi-word sequences using a soundboard. “My colleagues asked me, ‘Would you be interested in doing some research on this?’” Rossano said. Initially skeptical due to controversies in past animal language studies involving primates, he reconsidered when he saw growing interest from pet owners and the practical challenges posed by the pandemic.
Rossano launched the Dog Communication Project, which has since become the largest citizen science study of its kind. According to Rossano, it now includes 10,000 dogs and 700 cats from 47 countries across every continent except Antarctica.
The project draws inspiration from historical cases like Clever Hans—a horse once believed to perform arithmetic but later found to be responding to subtle cues from his handler rather than understanding mathematics. This so-called “Clever Hans Effect” remains a concern in animal cognition research today.
Unlike earlier studies that focused on single animals living outside their natural environments—such as Koko the gorilla or Nim Chimpsky the chimpanzee—Rossano’s approach allows pets to remain at home with their owners. The team collects data remotely through video recordings of thousands of button presses by participating animals. Efforts are made during home visits to prevent unintentional cues that might influence results.
Early findings suggest that some dogs do understand the meaning behind certain buttons and can use them in meaningful combinations more often than would occur by chance. For example, combinations like “outside” + “potty” or “food” + “water” appear frequently among participants. However, most dogs use only a handful of buttons; a smaller group demonstrates more advanced communication skills.
Rossano noted that at least 65 dogs in his study regularly use over 100 different buttons for communication. He described exchanges where dogs engage in back-and-forth negotiations with their owners: “‘It’s this back and forth we have published on,’ Rossano says, describing how some dogs engage in negotiation in a way that provides evidence of communication.”
He continued: “‘You don’t do that with a vending machine, right? If you hit ‘27’ and you don’t get Doritos, you don’t randomly hit other buttons expecting to receive Doritos. If you do this back and forth, like the dog did, you do this because you treat the other agent as somebody you can negotiate with, who could go your way if you can convince them. The dog is not treating you like a broken machine.’”
Most participating dogs use about nine buttons; many only manage three or four before losing interest. Once they master familiar words related to food or toys, their language patterns start resembling those seen in toddlers learning two-word sentences after reaching around 50 words.
Dogs’ expanded vocabularies lead them to communicate about various topics—including humorously frequent references to “poop.” Like young children exploring new words, some animals develop unique phrases until given new vocabulary options by their owners.
According to published data from late 2024 discussed here, more than 526 dogs were capable of producing multi-button sequences at that time—a number that continues to grow as more data is collected every two months.
“This is why we are doing the study,” Rossano explained. “To provide the public with an unbiased scientific assessment of what is going on with these dogs.”
He added: “‘A dog is a dog, not a child. But that doesn’t mean that they might not have cognitive abilities resembling the cognitive abilities of a young child. And if that is the case, we should know because maybe that would lead us to conduct ourselves differently and care for their welfare differently.’”
For further information about Rossano’s research or participation details for pet owners interested in joining future studies can be found here.
