Call Topic: Can Our Pets Tell Us What They are Thinking?
Research on the use of button pressing in dogs and cats which help animals to communicate their needs.
Guest Speaker: Federico Rossano, Founder and Director at Comparative Cognition Lab, UC San Diego
Once the idea of a talking pet was restricted to children’s books. Today, pet owners are endeavoring to train their dogs, cats and other animals to communicate through words. In this talk I will introduce you to the largest community science project ever undertaken in the field of animal intelligence, spanning thousands of participants from 47 countries and including several social media stars such as Bunny the Talking Dog. I will showcase how soundboards with world-labeled buttons can be used by animals to express their needs, wants and feelings, and how we are studying this phenomenon scientifically. We believe the findings of this study have the potential to ultimately change how we interact with animals, improve heir rights and mainly help protect their welfare.
Speaker Bio: Federico Rossano is an Associate Professor in the department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego. He obtained a laurea (BA+MA) in Communication Studies with a specialization in Semiotics from the University of Bologna (Italy). He received his PhD in Linguistics from the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). He has authored publications on psychotherapeutic interactions, joint attention and voice following in human infants and non-human primates, the development of property concerns, social norms, value perception and distributive and procedural justice in human ontogeny, gaze behavior in face-to-face interactions in different human cultures, gesture ontogeny and the development of communicative signals in baby non-human primates. His current research adopts a comparative perspective on social cognition and is focused on the development of communicative abilities and social norms in human and non-human primates.
About Community Conversations:
Maddie’s Fund, hosts a weekly hour-long Zoom call for animal well-being professionals. These calls are a collaborative space to share exciting new programs and research, discuss uncomfortable topics, connect with peers in the industry, and more, all while sharing a common goal of preserving the human-animal bond.
This call, recurring each Monday unless otherwise posted, is for executive directors, animal well-being leaders, shelter workers, pet support professionals, volunteers, and rescue organizations.
You need only register once to attend each recurring meeting. By registering for this event, your email address will be added to our community conversations mailing list where weekly meeting agendas and announcements are shared by Maddie's Fund. We do not share your information.
All calls are recorded and uploaded to the Community Conversations page on Maddie’s Pet Forum https://forum.maddiesfund.org/communityconversations
Win Ca$h for Attending!
Each month, Maddie's Fund will be giving away up to $5,000 in grants. You can enter to win each time you attend a call or watch on-demand during the month by completing the giveaway drawing entry forms shared in the chat during the calls.
Please note: All views expressed on these calls are not necessarily endorsed by Maddie’s Fund.
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