#whataboutbunny

[auntbibby]

i have a question about cat comprehension (and this probly applies to other pets too)

if pets like BilliSpeaks can comprehend human language when spoken outloud, (shown by when they respond in the same language via button-pressing)……

do ALL cats comprehend spoken human language from their owners, and most just cant demonstrate it cuz they dont have buttons?

i know sometimes dogs react behaviorally to the word “walk”!!

do most pets straight-up comprehend full sentences?????

[pips-doodles]

repost for colour: some little pup sketches from the sketchbook a couple of days ago! featuring an older screenshot of the lovely @whataboutbunny , who makes my day every time :) #art#artist#artistsofinstagram#artistoninstagram#sketch#sketchbook#dog#drawing#dogdrawing#illustration#sketchdump#dogillustration#illustrator#sketch#whataboutbunny#dogillustration#dogillustrations#dogsofig#dogsofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CqhgemgPzOj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bkfisher]

Bunny's a girl just fyi, but yes she's incredibly well versed in concrete and abstract ideas with her vocabulary!

Also I highly recommend speech boards. Dogs, cats can make great use of them, I'm sure other similar animals can use them too. There's an avian researcher who is working with tablets so her bird can not only communicate but do activities like puzzles and art.

We only have a few speech buttons (ngl they're a bit pricy) but even with rudimentary common phrases like "play" "outside" "walk" "park" and "hungry" our dog is able to effectively communicate wants and needs. (we also have a "love you" button she hits rarely, but definitely knows the intent: she hits it when her friends are over to play or when she's gotten particularly good treats or scratches)

A smart boy

[jryoungblut]

He won’t stop asking about the Hegelian Dialectic and I’m not smart enough to answer him!

[vai-in-mona-lisa]

@whataboutbunny Bunny, the talking dog

[thedonkeyofyourdreams]

rewatching the bastard son/half bad

Ep. 2

I wanted to add pictures this time, but my screenshots turn out black and I cannot be bothered to find a way around it right now. Oh well, I’ll add the gifs I can find. 

Poor Nathan, he was just stabbed and only the next day a group of people beat him up while his sister watches. And to think that the violence in the show is toned down compared to the books. 

I did read the books like a decade ago, and if you had asked me before I watched the show, what I could remember from the books I would have said:

* Boy being locked in a dog cage outdoors

* Boy falling in love with another boy

* My heart hurting, I might have cried

Honestly, I didn’t even remember that there was magic. 

Back to the episode. 

So we see Jessica training, and she is not the best, but she’ll be fine because she’s the most evil. She doesn’t need to hit all of the targets because she’ll get into peoples heads instead.  And I mean, Hazel is a bitch, and in some ways I can appreciate Jessica’s way of getting back on her in the locker room - but when Hazel is being killed and Jessica decides to take the opportunity to fuck with her one last time, I’m pretty much reminded that this girl is disturbed. 

Meanwhile, Celia is training Nathan, with just as much success. I’m still a bit confused about her showing up in the dark while he’s running, to tell him that he looks like his father. I get that they want her to say it so that we’ll hear her back story about seeing the killings, and that her back story explains why she is being a hardass towards Nathan, but the whole showing up in the forest is a bit weird to me. It is strange how we can see her being so rough on him and still kinda like her. She’s no mother figure, that’s for sure. I mean, give the kid a new outfit at least, he almost bled out in this one a month ago. 

I think it is great to see Annalise’s giving ceremony. It is such a stark contrast to Jessica’s. She gets fancy gifts, she has lots of high status guests and even a cake. Her father pricks his finger to give her blood, instead of cutting into his wrist like Nathan’s gran did. There is no doubt that there is an elite of witches and that when Jessica tells Kieran that she had to work a lot harder than him to become a recruit, she probably wasn’t exaggerating. 

Annalise and David. I’m kinda happy for her that she tried to move on from Nathan. I don’t think he looks weird. I still like her and her jokes. I hate him for grabbing her thigh and think it is an interesting way of introducing her powers. Trauma from the start. Oh how much easier it would be to be able to make animals talk. Personally I would have loved to have that skill. So would Annalise, she has no one else to talk to apparently, especially not about Nathan. Rats are smart though, you could probably teach them to use tiny buttons, whataboutbunny style. 

Soul... Showing his true colours. He doesn’t care that Hazel is dead at all, no reaction. He is scared that he’s about to be killed, I get that, but he kept the dark magic book for a reason. He wants to use it. He is ready to kill for the opportunity to use it. My first time viewing this, I didn’t understand what he was up to, so I didn’t quite understand yet how unhinged he already was at this point, but oh boy. More like he waited for the last of the ten to die so that he would get his chance. 

Or did you move your son to Nathan’s school to see what would happen? 

I’m still confused about the timeline though - it seems they just skipped winter?? Or was the halloween party not a halloween party?

Alright, another episode I enjoyed a lot. I could write loads more, but I’d rather keep watching.

[timemachineyeah]

(Source)

God I try to be so skeptical of these videos to just stare into the distance and think about math horses and confirmation bias but like

[ur-new-stepmom]

she used “and” to add to what he said, and then addressed him

original video

[meandmyprojects]

Raven’s words

Raven is our 7 year old anxiety ridden bully breed mix. After seeing how dogs are learning how to communicate with their owners via buttons programmed to say words, (aka whataboutbunny.com and hunger4words.com) I purchased a set of 4 Learning Resources buttons. Raven barks when she hears noises outside, so can I get her to, instead of barking, tap the buttons for “Neighbor” and “Outside?” Can me just trying to communicate with her more about what is going on in our neighborhood help alleviate some of her anxiety (and her barking?) I’m not sure yet. We don’t have an ideal learning environment (chaotic animal & kid filled household) and Raven’s anxiety gets in the way of her focus. The buttons arrived a month ago, and admittedly haven’t been working with her as much as we need to if we want to see her tapping a button. Now that we are 11 guinea pigs lighter, maybe we will have the time and the energy to devote to helping her learn. 

[parentingroundabout]

Roundabout Roundup: iPhone SE, what_about_bunny, and Lenox Hill

[firepone]

My life is improved every time I see bunny on tumblr

Bunny is going to take the world one day

[blueboyluca]

i am very interested in why you hate dog buttons (bc i also hate dog buttons and would love your take)

The first reason I don’t like it is because use of the buttons was popularised by a speech pathologist who is just fundamentally incorrect about dogs and speech. @zoologicallyobsessed did an excellent write-up of why dogs using these buttons is emphatically not an example of dogs using language.

The second reason I don't like it is because it's obviously a scam and it drives me crazy that people can't see it. The most famous users of these buttons are @hungerforwords and @whataboutbunny. I am not an expert in anything, but I know a lot about two things: dogs and video editing. What I know is: 1. dogs are not capable of language in the way that humans are, and are definitely not capable of understanding syntax; and 2. these videos are edited to make a narrative, which is the sole purpose of video editing!

Every single video is purported to show a dog “talking” through the buttons and every single video is fake as all hell. The dogs press the buttons because of their training and the videos are edited to piece together different footage to construct a narrative to make the dog’s actions make sense to the audience. The narrative is often embedded directly into the video, with the handler constructing it out loud with their voice by interpreting what the dog is doing.

The third and final reason that I hate it so much and wish it would just go away is because I don’t think it’s benign and I think it is hurtling the popular understanding of dog behaviour, dog communication and dog training backwards. As Kathy Sdao explains in her book Plenty in Life is Free, some ideas are “sticky”. This talking dog thing, like dominance theory, is one of those sticky ideas because it is simple (dogs can communicate in basic sentences), unexpected (dogs can actually talk!! we just hadn’t unlocked the secret yet) and concrete (see for yourself, dog pushes button, button says word, bing bang boom). Its popularity, however, comes at the expense of observing real actual communication that dogs are doing all the time. Instead of focusing on how to correctly interpret dog communication and behaviour and how to use training to augment our relationship with dogs, this talking dog thing comes in and just crushes all that beneath the weight of a wooden board covered in plastic buttons.

[wooteena]

whataboutbunny is basically the source of all my comfort videos. no i dont care that the research done on her has revolutionized how we see dog intelligence. yes i like seeing poodle press silly little buttons and make silly little sentences. we exist

[tiktoksformyfriends]

[video by whataboutbunny. original caption: FFS🤦‍♀️]

[dorka]

Bunny a legmenobb kutya az egesz vilagon.

Whataboutbunny neven talaljatok, dehat mindenki ismeri.