[imagesource: TikTok / what_about_bunny]

It’s been happening more and more frequently that Bunny, the famous talking Sheepadoodle on TikTok and Instagram, is asking existential questions.

The account’s Instagram bio even describes Bunny as “Sheepadoodle/ Existentialist”.

Not so long ago, while looking in the mirror, Bunny asked “who this?” using her augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device’s buttons that were set up for her to talk to her human parent, Alexis Devine.

She’s moved on since then, and is now able to answer the question with “dog” or “Bunny” when asked “who’s this?” by Devine.

In a more recent video, though, Bunny pressed a button for “dog,” then a second button for “what,” the third button for “dog” and a fourth one for “is” – “Dog what dog is?” narrated Devine.

This is similar to the existential crisis that I have every morning looking at myself in the mirror, not so fresh from bed and brushing my teeth.

You gotta watch Bunny ask the questions yourself to believe it:

From this:

@whataboutbunny🤯🤯🤯##what? ##mirrortest ##foryou ##smartdog ##bunnythedog ##wowww ##mydogtalks ##dogsoftiktok♬ original sound – I am Bunny

To this:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by I Am Bunny (@whataboutbunny)

According to Salon, Bunny is one of nearly 2 600 dogs and 300 cats enrolled in a project called They Can Talk:

The study’s aim is to understand if animals can communicate with humans through AAC systems.

AAC systems, such as Bunny’s giant labeled buttons that speak a single word when pressed, were originally designed to help humans with communication disorders.

Yet they have been adapted to be used in language experiments with animals, such as the study Bunny is enrolled in, which is led by Federico Rossano, director of the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California–San Diego.

Bunny has been thriving in this project, having garnered more than 6,5 million followers on TikTok and 810 000 followers on Instagram.

We are all clearly obsessed with the idea that her language-learning is making her develop some kind of self-awareness, among the other cute things she says and does.

Now the big question is, is it possible for animals to have a genuine awareness of ‘self’?

In the past, scientific evidence has shown that dogs don’t recognise themselves in the mirror, like humans, elephants, chimpanzees, and dolphins can.

The so-called mirror test is used to determine whether an animal has the ability of visual self-recognition, and is considered a marker of intelligence in animals.

But dogs perceive the world mainly through smell, so when you ask the question relative to this sense, you get a different answer about a dog’s intelligence.

Separate studies have shown that dogs can recognise their own scent, which suggests they do have some awareness of themselves.

Péter Pongrácz, an associate professor in the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, took the mirror-test further by studying dogs’ “self-representation” in a test called “the body as an obstacle”.

The study forced the animals “to negotiate physical challenges where their bodies can impede their actions” and was the “first convincing evidence of body awareness through the understanding of the consequence of own actions in a species where previously no higher-order self-representation capacity was found.”

“As our test proved this, yes, we can say that dogs are aware of their body, and as body-awareness is part of the complex self-representation system, yes, they can be considered as being self-aware,” Pongrácz added.

Rossano, however, is asking the questions of whether this behaviour is spontaneous (as in random and unprompted), or if it is trained and learned:

“I think there’s a good reason to believe that Bunny is probably capable of a sense of self and recognizing herself in the mirror, but to what degree is spontaneous versus learned over repeated exposures, I would say it’s more likely to be the latter than the former,” Rossano said, adding that “self-awareness” wasn’t something they were interested in measuring at first in the They Can Talk study. But now, that’s changed.

Either way, the AAC devices have clearly influenced Bunny’s sense of self.

Perhaps this is further proof that self-awareness and language could be connected, as language gives one an ability to communicate a sense of self:

“We know that language helps not just communicate with others, but also helps us categorize and it also gives us some sense of consistency and continuity over time,” Rossano said.

I am just waiting for her to push the buttons for “Bunny” “Think” “Bunny” “Is”.

Who are we to say it’s not possible?

[source:salon]