‘Talking’ Cats May Finally Tell Humans What They Really Think Via Buttons
Image by Billi Speaks and featured with permission
A common sentiment among pet owners and lovers is the wish that our pets could talk. Apart from being a welcome change to having to rely on guessing to meet their needs and wants, it’d also be pretty interesting to know what they have to say to us.
Well, it turns out that pets can talk. Although it’s not in the way humans communicate, it’s definitely bridging the gap between the two species.
Take Billi, for example. This 13-year-old domestic cat has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and YouTube for voicing her opinion on various subjects—like many human counterparts.
Billi communicates with her human, Kendra Baker, through an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device. This is a soundboard that comprises different buttons, each triggering an audio recording of a different word. By pressing the different buttons, Billi can communicate in human language.
This started in May 2020, when the pandemic allowed Baker some spare time. Baker learned of Christina Hunger, a speech language pathologist who discovered her dog Stella could “speak” using AAC.
After seeing a few other well-known “talking animals” on social media, Baker decided to try it on Billi despite not having seen other felines try it out before.
The buttons were “quite large for a little tiny kitty, and I was not sure that she was actually going to be heavy enough to press them,” Baker explains to Salon.
“So I started with a word that I’d really not recommend that you start with, which is ‘food,’ because it becomes very motivating for them. And Billi loves food.”
Today, more than a year later, Billi has amassed 51 words in her arsenal. Some of these include “oops,” “want,” “love you,” “TV,” “noise,” and “happy,” to name a few. She’s also now part of a wider research project studying talking animals, aptly named TheyCanTalk.
Another internet celebrity part of this research is Bunny, a talking dog, who has 7.2 million followers on TikTok at time of writing. Interestingly, it has been noted that dogs like Bunny prefer to put together full sentences when using the AAC, while Billi tends to favor single words.
As for whether Billi understands what the words actually mean, Baker explains that it’s not known for sure. “I don’t think we can answer the depth of understanding with the current amount of information we have,” she writes on Billi’s website.
“All we can say is ‘does she press the button in the correct context the majority of the time?’ For the most part, the answer to that is yes. Overall, it’s great enrichment, and Billi really enjoys it. So that’s enough for me.”
[via Salon, video and cover image by Billi Speaks and featured with permission]
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