Cat have trained human to say "yeah" everytime he presses a button.

I feel like the experiment was impacted by adding all the buttons at once rather than starting it with one word at a time.

The reason it became harder over time was something called "variable interval schedule reinforcement". Because, in Loqi's mind, pressing the button sometimes rewarded him with a treat and sometimes didn't, he was more willing to tolerate the failed attempts and keep going. I think the experiment would have been more successful if only one button had been introduced first. Also, I think moving it around to see "can you find it now?" was a mistake. That unnecessarily complicated things and confused him.

Some cats are definitely very very intelligent compared to others. I had a cat who watched water flow in the shower n disappear down the drain, then realise if the same would happen with pee. So she used the shower to pee for a while until she got into trouble. She also figured how to knock on the window to get inside. She taught her younger siblings from a new litter these things. Very clever girl.

the buttons needed to be introduced one by one and farther apart. it's like trying to teach an infant 10 different words at once when they barely know their first word.

i don't really get what the "attention me" button do when there's already snuggles and pets just next to it

Im a human and what “attention me” means specifically, other than look at me. Consistency is a a key . Dogs learn from 2-4-6-8 buttons... growing over loong time.

Meanwhile inside the cat mind: "my human is so-well trained! He learned how to feed me every time I press a strange button".

"cats cats cats cats CATS cats cats cats cats cats" finally someone is speaking my language

Why not start with fewer buttons? And why have buttons with no response, like "no" and "food"? Of course the cats are confused... And maybe the board should be in the hallway if you want to teach them the "out" button.

Cats if they could talk: “GIVE ME TREATS, GIVE ME ATTENTION, GIVE ME FOOD”

I don’t disagree with some of the things you’ve said. Critical thinking is so important. So I’m gonna apply a little here. Applied behavior analysis (what you’ve referenced w/Skinner) is a detailed skill that takes many years of practice and study to master. It’s both science and art. You can practice it for 10 years and still learn something new. It isn’t something u can have a basic understanding of and then just do it. We project far more than we think we do, and that prevents us from seeing what the animal is seeing. Videotaping yourself with some understanding/feedback from an experienced mentor can help u see how training mechanics work/don’t work. Watching this video I felt bad for all parties… it’s frustrating to try and train an animal that isn’t getting it, it’s frustrating for the animal if there is lack of clarity and not enough reinforcement. Mechanical skill was lacking on the trainer’s part. Rate of reinforcement, setting the learner up for success (to harness motivation), splitting behaviors… an understanding of this was clearly lacking. Once there is success with a behavior then you test the understanding of it… which I saw you trying to do, but you had far too many variables for the animal to succeed and gain clarity. I would like to see this experiment repeated under controlled conditions with experienced trainers. I don’t disagree with some of your conclusions, but this experiment just wasn’t designed well enough to come to those conclusions. Honestly though, I commend you for the dedication and love you clearly demonstrated for your cats. Not many people are willing to put in that much time and dedication. Thankyou so much for sharing

You had too many buttons. Had you started with just the treat one they would have been far less confused. Also, the buttons should have varying sizes and shapes. Half of the buttons are nearly identical to the cats due to their color blindness. They have the basic idea but they're confused by the test. Simplify it and keep trying. :)

I love watching BilliSpeaks. A cat that seems to have figured out how to make small sentences to get her point across.

With my first service dog partner, Will, I talked to him constantly. It was initially recommended to me as a way to keep him engaged and I just never stopped. I wasn't trying to teach him anything... but I did. By the time he parted this world, he knew at least 150 words, possibly more. And he knew them well enough that using the wrong combination at the wrong time created a great deal of excitement when it couldn't be fulfilled. At the same time, Will taught me a number of Will-words (for lack of a better term). These were things he trained me (and at least two housemates who never met one another) to understand. For example, when he wanted water in his bowl, he liked to nudge the bowl gently into the wall to create a bell-like sound. I don't know if he liked the sound or what, but that was the cue he wanted you to respond to. If the nearest awake human in the vicinity didn't get that, he'd bang the bowl into the wall. If that didn't work, he'd bark at the bowl. If that didn't work, he'd walk over to the human and bark at them and, when they looked up, go back over to the bowl and bark at it. I think you get the idea. I didn't tell those other two people that Will asked for water by ringing the bowl against the wall so they would get him water when I was in bed. He taught them that. I found out about his moonlighting activities as a housemate-trainer after the fact. We had a very rich communication, made up of things I introduced and things he introduced. For lack of a better way to put it, Will and I had a unique language, I think partially because I never made him use me-words to say Will-things. He had 8 different growls which were used depending on the situation, one of which would make me sit bolt upright in bed from a sound sleep. It wasn't just auditory cues: sometimes it was just stuff we figured out on the fly. At one point, we were together in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. I was in a safe space, so I told him to go play and he went well out of sight. Maybe five minutes later, due to a miscalculation on my part, I found myself sliding down a hill, wondering if he'd hear me when I hit the bottom and called out for him. When I hit the bottom and looked up, he was already there to help. Similarly, when he broke his paw, I knew immediately that something was incredibly wrong and that it wasn't a minor injury, despite other dog owners at the dog park and even the vet prior to the x-ray telling me it looked like a sprain. I knew it wasn't because, while some dogs might move that way due to pain, Will wouldn't have. At the time this was all happening, I thought it was a service dog thing based on the sheer amount of time we with service dog partners spend with them. It's a 24/7/365 situation, and you really do get to know them on a totally different level than any other animal. Now that I have a new service dog partner, I have come to realize that what Will and I had was more unique than I'd realized. We were special to each other in a way that just isn't always the case with service animal partner relationships. My new service dog and I certainly care for one another a great deal, but it just isn't the same. He doesn't really care what I say when I'm talking to him. He cares what I do and whether or not I've said very specific words. Everything else is, at least as far as he lets on, babble. And then there's the fact that some dogs are more attuned to the emotions of humans than others. And that's going to factor in to an ability to convey things beyond a fairly basic dynamic. Even if my current service dog wanted to understand me, I'm not sure he could because he struggles to understand human emotions. If Will saw a human in distress, he would try to comfort them. If Arthur sees a human in distress... I'm not sure he even knows they are distressed. Then again, maybe Arthur and I do understand one another more than most dogs and their humans, and it just seems basic by comparison. Either way, even what Will and I had wasn't a language in the technical sense of that term. It was true communication, but that's not the same thing.

With every button they press they are figuring out what you do to each one every time. They are smart.🤔🤗

You need to train using one button at a time. Once they use that button consistently you add a second button with a different reward. Catnip might work for one. 🥰

BilliSpeaks (here on KZfaq) is another cat that uses buttons! Her favorite word is "Mad".

Your cat was obviously getting curious as to what each button does in those clips and was starting to learn that the different buttons do different things, you make incredible progress, they did amazing for only a month, too pessimistic, very patient but not patient enough for this level of animal training. The next month could have been teaching that not all the buttons do the same thing, the animal was obviously starting to get that, even if there was some digression

I have been around my cats since they were born, and only one of them is really vocal, but she doesn’t meow at me, she meows at her kittens and she has very specific patterns for each kitten when she calls them, so she has names for them.

I taught my roommates' cat to use a "doorbell" when she wants to leave my room. (It's just a little bell sewed to dinner fabric and attached to the doorpost at her shoulder level) While I've used treats to teach her to follow commands, I didn't want her ringing the bell to get treats. Instead, every time I let her out of my room, I'd reach down and jiggle the fabric, ringing the bell. It took about 2 weeks before she started ringing it herself. To reinforce that I understand the bell to mean "open the door" I make sure to *immediately* go to open it for her. But if she sits by the door and meows, I make sure she doesn't want my attention for something else first (like a fly she wants to catch that's too high on the wall). She's now at a point where she consistently rings the bell to ask to leave my room instead of meowing or worse: shredding the carpet. Because ringing her doorbell is a way for her to communicate something she wants/feels/thinks, instead of her responding to a command, I consider it to be her first word.

Try spreading out the buttons a bit or start with one at a time. On Billie Speaks (the cat channel with the kitty who’s super advanced at this) she said it took her three weeks before she pushed her first button. She (the owner) also uses the buttons to respond. It’s a lot of work but it seems very effective. Billie’s using a ton of buttons now and sometimes makes up “words” like asking to “pet” her owner. It’s cute and a nice look into how animals think. It looks like Loki is testing you with those buttons trying to see which one is the working one. He’s narrowed it down to the two corner ones haha 😻

The way bill looks when you try to pick him up is amazing

My goodness guys this is a very entertaining KZfaq video, not an approved scientific study. This is straight up adorable to watch

Rotating the button board was unfair. I mean, think about how hard it is to have a software update move things around and that's when we can read, see colours vividly, use our years of experience with software, and have big brains. Well done though in general as my cat and I have been stuck on not pushing the buttons hard enough for weeks (even though I've rewarded accidental pushes). I think she just doesn't like using the buttons. I was planning on moving them though - as I wanted to get her used to the buttons first by putting them near things that made sense. She understood touching the buttons immediately. It's just pushing down now. I've just started with "treats" and "outside."

You should watch BilliSpeaks, that's why this showed in my recommended. She's progressed far beyond anything I've seen. It's very casual how it is presented, but also very wholesome and you quickly realize you have a cat there that really likes to learn, and a mom that has gone about it the right way, and that it has brought them closer together. It's really enjoyable to watch.

From Loki's perspective, HE is training YOU to bring the treat whenever he presses the button. Nice work! You have FAR more patience than I have.

The buttons need to be further apart, so that each activity is assigned a location and they're not easily mixed up (Go Outside button located by the door to the outside, treat button located by where the treats are stored, etc). That way multiple buttons also can't be pressed together.

i love that he did this very short and flawed experiment and thus concluded all animals definitely can't talk, while i sit here and watch bunny start making sense of past/present/future and talk about dreams. humans think so much of themselves.

You can watch Billi she's trained for months now.... And it seems like there's no difference between attention and pets. The best way is to press the button before you do the action so they can associate the sound with the appropriate action...making them learn one action at a time would take ages! Also a yes and a no button could reinforce whether you agree or not with the request they made by pressing a button...it's confusing for them if they press a button then there's no response from your part even a negative one it must be "vocalised" PS: The best thing for cats is to add a "mad" button😁

My cat was watching along with me and he quite positively interacted with the video. I trained him to speak every time i make a clicking noise, he somtimes clicks back. :3

My cat’s talk to each other. They meow back and forth like a whole conversation. It’s so cute. But none of my other cats I’ve had ever did that.

Loki is like a treat addict

Billiespeaks has a huge soundboard. She even combines words when she doesn't have the right one. She had a toy that's her favorite named bunny. She wanted to play but not with bunny but a beaver full of catnip. She didn't know the word for beaver so she named it catnip bunny

It was obviously flawed, but I love this guy for even trying to do this :3 how he interacts with them, I adore it! & you seriously did create a monster with Loki, I’m dying how treat-happy he gets pressing both buttons at the same time when he sees the treat coming xD! & I did notice him jumping up to you pretty much instantly when pressing cuddles, I think he had an idea on that one! Edit: But yeah, something like this requires a lot of patience & constancy ^^; over months- even years, but for the time you had- I think you did pretty well, for whatever that’s worth!(:

I love how adorable this was. Someone else did it and ended with about 10-12 working buttons that their cat used including "later"

I think you rushed the experiment and rewarded inappropriate button cues

As to Bunny and her owner, she is clear about it being just another way to communicate with her pet, like teaching tricks and such. Besides it feels like she teaches one word (or a few) at a time, over a longer period of time modelling it. And she says she remains skeptical if she's reading into it, or if something's really there. And I think language is also a spectrum. So animals probably can't pick up on grammatical structures or something like that, but if they can learn meanings of a bunch of words, that's pretty cool too.

This is so cute to watch! I love how they end up asking for snuggles, pets and attention a lot 🥺

I’m just so focused on how good that breakfast bagel looked.

This is a great guide on what NOT to do 🤣

There's also Billi the cat that pushes buttons.

Literally, Loki's doing what babies do. Babbling. Testing what happens

The buttons sound eerily similar to the monkey from cloudy with a chance of meatballs

From the cat's perspective, what's the difference between the "pets" vs "attention me" buttons? Are these redundant, and perhaps confusing?

⚠ "yes/no" buttons seem kinda useless at this point because they don't understand the idea behind the words yet ("accept/reject"). I think for now, you'll find more use out of verb/action words. Also I think you shot yourself in the foot by rewarding every button press with snacks. It'll confuse them by making them think it's the button giving the snack rather than the sound of the specific word being spoken. Another thing is that I think you're teaching too much at once. Go one or two words at a time. And once it's learned, you can add more. Teaching technique matters. One last thing is to be humble. They're not brain dead, just slow. If you're patient and use the right methods, they'll learn it the same way dogs learn commands such as sit and play dead. Remember: they need to learn the sound of the word. That's key.

My cat Roscoe memorizes WHERE the buttons are, rather than "reading" them. If I were to move them around I think it would really confuse him. He LOVES having the buttons though. Uses them all the time (drives me crazy with them lol).

this video is so professional i thought it was an ad when it cut to a different thing

I do hope you attempt this again in a more controlled manner like I'm seeing others suggest with one button at a time. It's definitely possible, just not nearly as sensational since it takes time for them to normalize it.

You've also ignored instances where Bunny communicated something concrete without prompting. For example, she pressed, "Ouch nose," they took her to the vet, she had a scratch on her nose - deep enough to hurt, shallow enough to be unnoticed by her people.

I love that the second Loki realises the button gives him a treat he's just spamming it 😂

The intro is a masterpiece of writing and editing. You've earned a subscriber in the first 2 minutes. Cheers.

You need to do one at a time and don’t start with a treat button or they miss the bigger picture. Try play as a reward or outside if they like that. Your cats are eager to learn. Lessen the confusion for them. Make it a bonding experience.

You put a lot of work into this, and your patience is impressive, but the data you've collected doesn't support your point. trying to teach a cat a single experiment doesn't refute the potential for primates to use basic signs to communicate. It's like saying, "I tried to teach my aunt to play World of Warcraft, and she couldn't figure it out. Therefore, women can't play video games." Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting experiment, but two cats failing to associate eight nearly identical buttons with specific actions doesn't prove that primates can't use basic sign language to communicate ideas. If you want to make the point that primates can't understand or use any language, then make a video specifically about that. Show footage of Koko and where her signs don't represent actual ideas -- that would be more convincing, and I'd watch it.

Omg the way Bill grabs your hand to get eggs is too cute.

Thank you for being so honest about this. Not many are willing to admit that things don't work out as expected.

They didn't get it because you didn't do any of this right, other comments explain it better but people are gonna turn a blind eye and assume cats just can't do this and that the other ones are a hoax.

Did you do any research on teaching your kitties to speak before starting the video? because it really doesn't look like you did. it's kinda like you wanted to hop on the bandwagon and don't actually care about the science? Hell, just from Bunny's channel, you should know that a) assigning a deadline is completely unhelpful, because non-human animals process language differently, and b) you have to carefully model each word, without contradiction. You set yourself up for failure here, dude.

Bill is adorable. He seems so grumpy lol. Just like me

Lol idk if you have seen these new training videos where they show you how to train the cat on how to press the button (which is probably the longest part of the whole training process) . Then you have to place the buttons around the house for whatever their uses are for. Finally you bring all the buttons together on the board in sections where they closely relate so the cat and distinguish the categories much easier.

tr-t-t-tr-tr-t-treat

advice to future cat trainers: start with only the treats button, and then, when the animal has learned it's meaning, add other buttons, but don't keep the treat jar in hand, because the cat will do anything, press any buttons, to get the food and it will not learn anything that way.

At the end of day one, your cat trained you to push buttons quite well

They say our school days are the best times of our lives - and how true is that - so many treats!

I think Bunny and Billyspeak do try to build sentences with the limitation of their understanding and the small sample buttons hences their human mom fills in the gaps. They've only started pushing buttons for few months. That is impresive! Also this practise is for human to understand animal better because humans are incapable to understand animals in their ways of connecting. I also believes the people who trained their pets to push buttons advised to start with one button.

Agree w/ one button at a time idea. Also, try using different shapes as labels since the text labels probably all look similar to the cats. Good luck!

20:12 I beg to differ. He understands "play." His eyes light up, veering off to his left, anxious to play, 🤣😻😸LOL.

21:00 the way loki presses the buttons frantically, makes it seem like loki a desperate treat addict, willing to do anything for a fix xD

Bunny can chain words together to create new meanings that are clever. She understands past and future. They’re just worse at it than we are. Language and communication are the same thing.

I think attention me might be too similar to pet and snuggle since there isn't any clear action for attention.

Your experiment was a success. You have proven that cats want everything, all the time. Enjoyed your efforts

Our cats trained us more than we trained them. Even a kitten we found outside (born in a barn from ferals) got the concept of the litterbox instantly. We now give the cats treats at their prompts

Have you seen Billi the cat? She uses those.

They _say_ that cats only meow to humans and not each other, but if you live in a multi-cat household, surely you know that's not true.

This guy has the patients of a saint plus I like him as his honest.

Ahh man!!! Laughed til I cried 😂😂😂. Loki was getting the shock of his life every time he reached for a button 😂 😂😂. Bill really did catch on quickly though. Great content.my fave Vid of the day 😁😁😁

personally, I think bill learned the best, he actually seemed to know not every button was treats

And yet animals can firmly grasp the basics when we talk to them. I'm yet to see a cat/dog that didn't put words and body language and context together to understand if it's treats time or getting scolded for eating plastic time. Maybe it's just okay if they can't communicate on our terms... not being anthropomorphic doesn't make their inner workings any less profound.

Loki clearly has two favorites. Treats. Snuggles.

I’m glad you explained linguistics beyond Skinner in the end. Because I was gonna give you a piece of my mind. Your cats are super cute and the video was fun! You should have added one button at a time.

It works by saying the word while doing the action. In addition, teaching them to say it rather than "do it to say it" (which uses not one, but two parts of the brain -- physical communication and verbal understanding, thus working their brains harder). Cats are vocal. They can make 100+ sounds. My current cat understands more words than she can say, but the coolest thing is I started teaching her short, simple sentences less than 6 months ago, and she's doing it!

In addition to Bunny the Dog, check out Hunger for Words - Christine Hunger is a speech therapist who initially began this whole trend with her dog, I think... Billi Speaks was the first cat I saw learning to speak with buttons, & I believe someone has just begun teaching their pigeon, too - yay!

Cats communicate visually, through body language. Cats learning our language has happened, their response is the "meow".

I run an animal shelter. I think it's amazing that you documented this. I've seen other videos of cats pressing buttons to get rewards but haven't seen how it's done. I train my dogs here. Now that your cats have learned that pressing the button gives a reward, change the layout to only one button and do a different button at a time. (Maybe leave the treat button for last) They need to associate the sound and the color to the specific reward. Nice work!

Pets can communicate. Can they "talk" to us or have a conversation with us? Probably not. But they can communicate.

I just want to say that I have great affection for Koko the gorilla and am convinced she understood very well what she communicated and what was being communicated to her. I think it can be hard for humans to admit another creature has greater intelligence than they had believed. :)

It was really cool to see you open it up and tune it. I had no idea you could tune an instrument like this!

My cat as a kid used to meow in different sounds like mum, nan and jaz. it was a Joke at first but then it was obvious to tell who he was talking too 😂

Given how much time we've spent at home the last year, we've grown a lot closer to our cats. (It was that, or annoy them until they killed us and ate the carcasses.) We decided why not see how much we can engage them and train them? They've been eager to solve problems and to play with us. We had already taught the cats high five when they were kittens, and a few months back (they were a little over a year old) I decided to see if I could clicker train them. I tried following the advice to teach them one command, make sure they had it down, then move on to the next. Took them two sessions to understand click = treat, and they got quickly bored if I only taught one command at a time. They learned up, down, over, circle, here, and sit with clicker, gesture, and voice command in 3 or 4 days. I ran out of oomph to figure out more commands to teach them at that point, so that's where we've stayed. One cat is highly treat motivated. He watches me like a hawk when I get out the treats and tries to anticipate what command I'm going to give so he can get the treat faster. He's amenable to any training I've come up with, as long as there's a treat involved. Sort of like the Energizer Bunny Rabbit. The other is more, "Meh, maybe I'll do it if I feel like it." Very much believes in conservation of energy. If it requires energy, it's too much effort.

I think you need to bring one button in at a time

Thank you for sharing your experience with the process.

This breed is the must talkative I had one for 11 years..my was talking with out button's..

Billiespeaks and catmanjohn are doing well with these buttons, Billie has something like 30 to 40 words! Russ has at least 15 words and both cats have started combining two or more words together

I think it could be more effective to install the buttons one by one

Soon as he stood there pressing it realizing the cause and effect was like damn! :D

Bill got it very fast from watching Loki. Cool!

Everyone says cats don’t meow at each other. This is a lie. My cats literally only meow at each other to come into the other room with them.

When he started to talk about Koko, I almost cried because she loved Robin Williams and was so heartbroken when he passed 😭💔I know we all were, but if even a gorilla is sad that he died, that really means something.

brushy is a good word and then you brush your cat with that detangler brush its like a heavenly massage....

Watching with my cat as soon as you said treat she left the room and went to room with treats lol