Can Dogs Talk? | Tumble Episode
Can dogs talk, or do they just communicate? In this episode, 10-year-old Silas’s question takes us to Amalia Bastos, who studies how animals think and communicate at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Along the way, Amalia explains why scientists spent decades trying to teach animals human language, and how viral videos of dogs pressing word buttons on soundboards brought the old questions back. Then she shows us how she tested those dogs with sticker-covered buttons and noise-canceling headphones. Can our pets use real language to communicate with us? Listen and find out!
🎧 Listen to the Episode
🐶 What Kids Will Learn
How scientists apply skepticism, even when a viral video seems convincing at first
Why scientists spent decades trying to teach chimpanzees and bonobos human language, and why they argued so much about the results.
How a scientist designed a fair test to help understand how animals might use language
🔎About The Featured Expert
Dr. Amalia Bastos is a scientist who studies how animals think. Originally from Brazil, she’s now a Lecturer in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She studied biology at the University of Oxford and earned her PhD in comparative psychology, the science of comparing how different animals’ minds work, at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Amalia wants to know how evolution shaped the minds of different species, and what’s going on in animals’ heads as they solve problems and figure out the world. She studies how animals understand each other, how different species (like dogs and people!) communicate, and whether animals have a sense of social “rules.” Her puppy, Saffron, made a guest appearance during our interview.
🧑🏫 Classroom & Home Resources
🎯 NGSS Performance Expectations: 4-LS1-2, 3-5-ETS1-3, MS-LS1-8
📜 Science and Engineering Practices: Asking Questions and Defining Problems, Planning and Carrying Out Investigations, Engaging in Argument from Evidence
🧩 Crosscutting Concepts: Patterns, Cause and Effect
📚 Learn More:
Download our free Signal → Sense → Response worksheet (4-LS1-2), where students chart how an animal notices a signal, which sense picks it up, and how it responds
Watch What About Bunny on YouTube, the channel of the soundboard-trained sheepadoodle whose videos helped spark a wave of button-pressing dogs online
Watch the Bunny video we describe in the episode, then try being a skeptical scientist: what might be happening off camera that the video doesn’t show?
For adults, read Amalia’s study, How do soundboard-trained dogs respond to human button presses?, published in PLOS ONE.
Learn more about Amalia’s research at the University of St Andrews, where she studies how dogs, apes, and other animals think
💬 Discussion Questions
Throughout the episode, Amalia was very careful not to say anything definite that she couldn't support with evidence, even when Bunny's videos were very convincing. Why do you think she does that? Is that kind of thinking useful all the time?
Do you agree with Silas that dogs are communicating, but not exactly talking? Why or why not?
Did you learn anything new about dogs from this episode?
🎧 More Episodes About Dogs & Animal Communication: What Do Dogs Think?, What’s That Bird Song?, What Sounds Do Fish Make?
📚 For Teachers: Explore our Audio Courses for NGSS-aligned science learning.
✉️ Don’t miss new episodes! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider signing up for our mailing list!
🫶Support Tumble!
Click here to become a Patron! Ad-free early access to episodes is just $1/month, and for just $5/month, get a birthday shout out on our feed!
Click here to visit the Tumble Merch Store! T-shirts and other merch (including merch specific to this episode) are available for purchase.
