This 👆

I loved the oops!

Except that animals don’t think in sentences, or syntax, or mistakes, or guilt, or redos, the list goes on. As a certified trainer it’s just sad to watch average people think that they’re actually teaching their pet anything at all

@@StaticResurreXion deaf people don't think verbally, do they? if someone learns a new language later in life, they don't constantly think in that language, do they? intelligent animals can communicate with each other and other species, including humans, without any sort of training or buttons - these things only make their communications more clear for us when it works out. now of course the size difference between the brain of a cat and a human makes extended and/or complex conversations impossible. but to deny that any connections could be made is simply absurd.

@@champagnesupernova1839 Brain size is not a valid indicator of intelligence anymore. Between studies showing bird brains work much differently than historically thought to and a specific slime passing all the scientific tests to determine actual intelligence, simply having what humans recognize as a brain is no longer even a valid starting point. While in some instances brain to body ratio may affect the thought process, it is only human vanity to wholeheartedly believe that humans are the only ones who can have intelligence (as is the person you posted your response comment to - Static Resurrection), be it demonstrated verbally or with actions. There are black kites (raptors)that use fire to it's own advantage, as in it picks up something that is already burning/smoldering then flies to an area not affected by fire, drops it to create another burn area so that is is easier to find prey during droughts. This has only been seen in Australia. Tell me that is not seriously intelligent! They are the only known species to use fire as such a tool aside from humans. Personally I think Billi is communicating in what is probably her second learned language, her primary one being her natural verbalizations/body language and her first learned one being whatever she focused on early in life to understand whatever she wanted to learn. @Champagne Supernova none of the above should be taken in a negative light with regards to what you posted. Please do not take my directness for anything insinuating insult or detriment to you! The so called "certified trainer" 'Static Resurrection' made me rather annoyed at their display of outright tunnel vision, troll style. That is where any bite in my words comes from. Animals are so much more than the masses of humans give them credit for. Not only in language skills or intelligence, but in social groups, family groups, inter species interaction + cooperation + understanding. Only the small minded and afraid seek to diminish the amazing wonders that other life forms are. Billi - you freakin rock!! [Edited to fix typos, but probably still missed some]

Yes! 😆 I adore her. Great comment. Warm wishes from Minnesota!

Also, I just realized that (at lest what we see of) Billi's comunication has gotten much more consistent. Back when Billi had only 2 hexagons, it was just "food" and "pets" and "mad" when she didn't get them. Then there was a phase where some of her "sentences" frequently made little sense (or required serious interpretation). But now, most of her sentences are reasonably clear.

@@Pystro Great that her mom never gave up on letting Billi learn

My cat "WARBLegarble...." "Nrrrrrreeeeoooooooooommmmrrrrrrr" "Woe.... woe .... (tiny voice) woe" "MAR! MARRRRrrrr" "Rao" "Meow" "Mew" *turkey noise* Oi, the talkingest donkey, I mean cat, you ever saw Not always... but she gets her point across better than my three year old sometimes.

This is so cute. Wish i had this with my siamese she lived till 20. Very smart cat. Very vocal.

I’m your 90th like !

@@katyabella8137 Congrats :)

It’s clearly beyond the point of koko the gorilla, as we are allowed to see complete interactions without jumpcuts, and the audience isn’t locked out of the communication due to the faux “primate sign language”. Moreover Billi is clearly beyond the point of merely attempting permutations to get a reward, and has been observed to use the buttons when the humans are not nearby/paying attention. Talking to one’s self is a formative linguistic behavior that is often seen in human children. One failure of the medium is the inability for Billi to “stumble into” new word, perhaps saying hope instead of soap, the parent would provide context for the new word. In this case Billi’s vocabulary can only expand when more buttons are added.

😂😂😂

😹😹

Dad noise, Billi ouch ear 😂

Apparently dad sings better then the hamilton soundtrack 😂😂...

😂😊

I wonder how Kendra can tell her, mom work with outside Animals to help them with their ouch

Exactly 😁💐

@@izabellakaliszka4804 Yeah! That would make more sense to Billi maybe? Mom makes outside animals ouch bye?

@@maetodecember hmmm ... Mom works *Mom* *work* With outside Animals *Outside* *dog* *outside* *cat* *outside* *bird* . And mommy helps them with their ouch *Mom* *help* *ouch* *bye* .

i had always wondered how, and if, we can communicate to them that humans *have* to work to gain money and make a living, and it is not usually out of fun

Yes, it was amazing to see she felt sorry for hurting mom.

🥰🥰🥰

Thanks i was trying to figure out what catnip water is haha

She's not wrong

I think she’d spam the mad button if I did that 😂

@@BilliSpeaks 🤣🤣🤣

@@BilliSpeaks or you would have a new co-worker lol

@@BilliSpeaks The Billi community has decided we need a cat carrier take Billi to work day then we need the Billi blog 🤣🤣

Surely the cat can already smell the scents from coworkers and zoo animals on her when she comes home after work?

Either way, it's absolutely adorable.

This was really cool to see how much Billie communicates and all the complex buttons she uses

I was thinking she saw a squirrel and was mentioning that. But maybe your right. Regardless a new button for the friend would be good with a picture of his face and have it say his name. That would be cool.

Friend might have had a big pony tail.

Billi's buttons are also grouped into categories - the toys, time-related word, and names are each together. Bird and squirrel are positioned near the names. Perhaps Billi decided that this one friend (Gracie?) needed her own name, and having no other button, assigned her one that was available?

"Why am _I_ not allowed to 'work' with outside bird???" - Billi

@@johannageisel5390 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I love your comment so much! Definitely what Billi was thinking.

So much personality

😂😂😂

Yep. Plus they only watched about 2 minutes of Billi and then decided to give their professional 🙄 opinion 🤣

Agree!!!!!!!!

There's another one I watch frequently. I think it's catmanjohn or something to that effect. They have at least 3 or 4 cats but the one that talks with buttons is Russell and he's whip smart. I think he's a rescue from a hoarder so he's very very insistent on cleanliness. They're all quite remarkable. There's no way all of these furparents are manipulating these interactions.

@@notorioustori I didn't know Russell is a rescue from a hoarder. That does indeed explain his insistence on cleanliness, nothing being out of place and getting the laundry done. 😀

@@LindaVernon I didn't either until very recently! It's the vid where he used the "litter" button but he was surprisingly talking about the cardboard boxes (trash) by the door! 😵😅

That’s one of my favorites too 😂

What time in the clip? I remember it, but can't find it.

@@dwsel 3.42

I think He meant to Press the button "dad" after i do Not understand

Dad singing dethklok - awaken! Rise!

Check out our website for getting started resources! @catmanjohn is an account with multiple cats, if you don’t already follow them.

@@BilliSpeaks thank you!

I was so glad to see squirrel naming made it in! Probably my favorite video! I just got to it.

I wonder if Billie enjoyed the laughter and commotion it caused when she, accidentally or experimentally, hit the squirrel button, and so then kept hitting it to get the humans' uproarious response.

Sorry. Another thought: I too wish I could have a chance to give bunches of love to Billie, and, talk with her also. How amazing would that be?

Perhaps she associates the squirrel button with any quality a person and a squirrel could feasibly share. Moves around rapidly? Makes high-pitched sounds? Has reddish-brown hair or dark eyes?

It is kinda neat huh? It’s sorta like how we have dominant hands. They have dominant paws hahaha

That is a good point actually!!

​@@emilyshaw286 About 75% of cats have a preferential paw, and in the overall cat population it's a roughly equal split betwixt right- or left-pawed. Interestingly, studies have shown that female cats seem to be right-pawed than males.

My cat is SO sensitive and proud. If she gets a hint that we are laughing at her (or that we saw her make a mistake), she would bite us (hard) and be mad for hours. We learned the wrong way to not laugh at her (or to not get caught laughing at her.... we have to pretend we are laughing at a joke or something) xD.

Yes and if you watch closely, she actually actually flinches when Kendra says "outside cat."

'Did you see how smart and cute Iam? Make sure to record plenty so I will go down in history!'

@@jeanneann3545 hahahaha exactly!

This is because the camera is “activated” by noise or moving, it clicks singularly when it skips from monitoring to recording. I imagine she is looking for, or expecting that click noise

OMG, I read your comment as she looked into the camera!!! 💥💯🤔

is there a reason for word grouping? can you move buttons and she recognize the icon picture still? Billie is remarkable. thank you for efforts.

You’re welcome!

Just coming to say the same thing. Lots of work to compile. Love Billie

Me three. Thanks for all that work!

Was thinking the same! So enjoyable!! Many thanks!

This was my first thought too, a lot of work to put this together and it's awesome. Thank you BilliSpeaks!

It’s a scientific study with I believe 1000 participants. The woman has a has a biology and veterinary degree. This is recorded findings for the study.

Frans de Waal wrote a book " are we smart enough to understand how smart animals are". The book documents the long, tragic, infuriating list of excuses humans have used to refuse to acknowledge animals intelligence. The goalposts are ever moved. And when all else fails, humans just ignore studies like these.

Well there are over 3000 animals in the study Billie is part of and I know as lot of other cat owners have been inspired by Kendra and Billie to start using buttons so there probably is a cat like the one you discribed out there!

There are also some cats out there that might really do amazing things with these buttons if given the oppertunity. Indy from the Walter and Santi channel comes to mind. That cat can blast though challanges and learn much quicker than most other cats.

I absolutely agree, and it will be interesting to learn about animals exposed to buttons at an earlier age. I'm still so impressed that a cat Billi's age has learned to use buttons so successfully. Billi has been in an environment for years where she gets lots of interaction and exposure to language, which must help, but just starting to use speech to express yourself at Billi's age is pretty dang impressive.

@@Catherinzsl Ofc it is impressive that billie learned it at that age. but i want to see what the maximum is. and how much of a difference it makes that billie was raised with humen from a young age. i bet billie already had some form of understanding of human language. similar like a child, that is surrounded by complex music from a young age, developes perfect pitch. it is theorized that perfect pitch basically is the human brain learning to differentiate notes like processing language. they just hear that a note is a E2 like they know the color blue or any other. i think it would not only be of scientific interest to see a young cat learn the buttons, but also a feral that has not had much human contact in their youth. this is so interesting

Try @ToddTalks …

You’re welcome! I am too, subtitles save me!

I have poor information processing so cc really helps me too, subtitles for all!

Definitely as cats close vision is terrible so she probably can't see the images on the buttons at all

You still showed them love and that’s beautiful. I’m sure they loved you so much and even if they couldn’t directly say things, they were happy with you

We miss a lot more in human-human communications. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i8CCmZifyN-vdJs.html

😹😹 I have an addiction

I held out for this after reading your comment. She is incredible! 😂😂

My cat is vocal if I leave her outside too much XD

Hours indeed 😹 I yelled “Billi has too many buttons!” in frustration many times lol. But overall was fun to go back through videos!

Wow 🤩🤩🤩

@@BilliSpeaks One cannot ever have too many buttons 🧙‍♂️

i think she's said in the past that she didnt want to add "sad" as having multiple buttons for negative emotions could get confusing for billie, since sad and mad are kinda similar. i think mad tends to be enough most of the time, but it would be neat to see billie express more in-depth what type of negative feeling she's having.

I love that one, but wanted to stick to recent footage!

She might! We may get there some day 🤗

@@BilliSpeaks Aw! Smart kitty!

Honestly I don't think she is a genious. Just a normal cat that learned. Cats are so much smarter and complex than we give them credit for. (Many animals are)

@@Netbase2000 I completely agree with this. I feel like people tend to see single examples of non-human animal intelligence and go "wow a uniquely intelligent personality!" instead of "wow I guess they're all a lot smarter than I thought". I've been scolded for anthropomorphism but I think the miscommunication there is that others may see certain attributes as exclusively human, whereas I eat plants 🌿

@@Netbase2000 I had many cats. All are intelligent, but some demonstrate it in a way that's easier to relate than others. My current cat communicates with me with meows (very different depending what she wants), while my late cat communicated more with gestures.

@@Serena-or7sl Yes absolutely. Every person living with cats should learn to read the body language or meows. I grew up with cats and known many over the years. All are different.

Mousey heaven ☁️☁️

She knows. She's a 🐈 😻

I feel like she has a degree of purposefulness that dogs don't have.

@@steggopotamus yep. And she's not just expressing needs. Dogs mainly tell what they want. Billi also comments, gives statements... it's not all about food, play and pets. She has strategies to get to an end - not necessarily trying to get there directly. Three are way more nuances and complexity in her expressed thinking than I've seen dogs having.

Most of all they do it without proper evidence too. 99% of the people cant evem explain to you how the current model for speech is from a neurobiological perspective. This shows me that its just some tribalism instinct going on.

For oops, Kendra said she modeled it when she would hit the wrong buttons on accident (usually while using a foot to hit buttons), thus teaching the idea that oops would sort of erase what you said. And I don't understand is a very new button that Kendra has been modeling ever since she started with buttons! She always says 'I don't understand. Can you try again?' when Billi says something Kendra doesn't understand. Billi seems to have taken to using it as intended very quickly which is so amazing.

The way you teach a child those things: you say them appropriately. For most language we don't sit children down and repeat words at them, we just narrate what we're doing when we're in "baby teaching mode", talk naturally otherwise. This is also how children notoriously pick up swear words. Nobody tries to explain to the kid what it means, it just pops out of their mouth at the worst possible time and little kids figure out that's what you say when things went oops...