 As a pet owner, there's nothing more that I would love than if my cats could talk to us. When our cats, Maya and Wyatt, are acting irrationally, I often tell my beautiful girlfriend Tristan that I wish they could talk. I also wonder what they would say if they could talk. Our cat, Maya, seems to have the most random mood swings when she's purring and cuddling with you one minute, and then next, she's scratching your face. Meanwhile, Wyatt just seems like a grumpy old man. And I think if this cat could talk for a day, what would he say? Would he have a conversation with us, or just a man for us to give him more food? Well, if you're like me and dream of a day where animals can talk, you may be inclined to believe the videos of this viral TikTok dog named Bunny and that they are real. Alexis DeVine is the owner of Bunny, a dog who uses buttons to communicate with Alexis. Although I wish this were real, today we're going to debunk Bunny. Now, don't get me wrong, dogs are extremely smart creatures. In fact, many animals are. As a big fan of the psychologist B.F. Skinner, I know that behaviorism is extremely effective. With the right incentives, we can train animals to do just about anything. But unfortunately, talking isn't one of those things. While there are many skeptics who think that Alexis simply showcases the best takes of Bunny using these buttons, based on the research, I think there's more of a psychological explanation. So we're going to discuss the idiomotor effect and how it can make animals appear to be smarter than they actually are. But first, we need to understand the human tendency of anamorphism. In their book, The Mind Club, Who Thinks What Feels and Why It Matters, Daniel Wagner and Kurt Gray dedicate an entire chapter to why we attribute minds to certain animals but not to others. This is a fascinating chapter, but for the purpose of this video, we're going to focus on anamorphism. Anamorphism is a distorted projection or perspective especially an image distorted in such a way that it becomes visible only when viewed in a special manner. Anamorphism is the reason why people like Alexis can easily make us believe that Bunny can talk with these buttons. And Alexis probably believes it as well. When we understand the history of talking animals, we can get a little bit closer to the truth. And that's why we're going to discuss the story of the math-solving horse named Clever Hauns. But before we get started, if you're new to the Rewired Soul, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Here we use critical thinking and practice skepticism to better understand the world as well as ourselves. And as always, there are affiliate links down below in the description for all of the books that I referenced in this video. Over a hundred years prior to Alexis and her talking dog Bunny was a math-solving horse by the name of Clever Hauns. In the early 1900s, a man by the name of her Wilhelm von Austin owned a horse named Hauns who could apparently solve complex math equations. A horse that can solve complex math is quite the site. So Von Austin made quite a bit of money touring with Hauns and doing shows. Von Austin taught Hauns to not only add and subtract, but Hauns could multiply, divide, and work with fractions. Unlike Bunny, Hauns didn't have buttons to press, so he would count out the answers by tapping his hoof. If you asked Hauns what is 12 plus 12, he would tap his hoof 24 times. What's 10 divided by two? Hauns would tap five times. Much like Bunny, it was incredible. But back then, they didn't have TikTok or viral sites like Mashable, so Hauns mainly received his clout from newspapers and word of mouth. But even though people were more likely to believe in the unbelievable back then, there were still skeptics and critical thinkers. Some of these critical thinkers were psychologists and they believed that there was a better explanation for Clever Hauns than a horse being able to do math. This psychologist was a man by the name of Carl Stumpf and his work is referenced in some of my favorite books on supernatural psychology, like Super Sense by Bruce Hood and Paranormality by Richard Weissman. I actually first learned of Carl Stumpf in The Skeptics Guide to the Universe by Dr. Steven Novella. Stumpf's work is so popular because during a time when people believed much more in the supernatural, he was brave enough to go against the group and try to discover the truth. Stumpf was able to get Von Austin to agree to letting a team research Clever Hauns to see if the horse really had these abilities or if it was something else. In order to do this, they had to set up a series of experiments and the first variable they wanted to factor out was Von Austin. To ensure Von Austin wasn't somehow giving Hauns the answers or saying some type of code with his wording, they had other people ask Hauns the questions. Surprisingly, Hauns was still able to answer correctly. Score one for Clever Hauns and Von Austin. But then, Stumpf started to wonder if Hauns was clever but just in a different way. If Hauns wasn't getting the answer through language, maybe it was through sight. So, Stumpf and his team hid Von Austin from Hauns' view with his sheet and Von Austin would ask the questions. Lo and behold, Hauns couldn't get any of the answers right. Then, they duplicated Hauns' inaccuracies with other people. So, what was going on? Well, some people would assume that Von Austin somehow figured out signals to give Hauns intentionally the consensus is that Von Austin was just as clueless as everyone else. This is when Stumpf and his colleagues discovered that we often make unconscious movements without even realizing it, which was later called the idiomotor effect. If you remember my previous video on Ouija boards for the supernatural psychology series, this explains why we believe Ouija boards are actually being moved by spirits from beyond the grave. Much like other animals, clever Hauns was extremely intelligent but in a different way. Hauns didn't know how to do complex math, but he did know how to read the slightest body movements when he would tap and reach the right answer and then stop. The subtle movements from Von Austin were Hauns' subtle signals to stop tapping, which gave the appearance of him knowing the answer. So, now that we know the story of clever Hauns and the idiomotor effect, what's up with Alexis and her dog Bunny? By now, I'm sure some of you watching this video are upset and defending Bunny. You're looking for explanations that explain how Bunny is the real deal and trust me, I get it. Some of you may even be pointing to gorillas who use sign language as proof that animals can speak. Yes, it's true that some primates can use sign language, but we often neglect to realize that the brain of a gorilla and the brain of a dog are completely different. As humans, we make the mistake of lumping many animals together, but the reality is that they all have different capabilities based on the nuances of their evolution. We need to remember that the brain of a gorilla is much closer to the brain of a human than a dog's brain is to a gorilla. So, is Alexis lying to us? Is this all a setup to go viral? Personally, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. So, I do not think Alexis is playing an elaborate hoax on all of us. I choose to believe that much like Clever Hans and Vaughn Austin, Alexis may not realize that she's giving Bunny cues that give the appearance that Bunny can talk. Without doing a proper experiment, it'd be hard to prove my theory. So, I thought we could just discuss what a proper experiment would look like. Much like the story of Clever Hans, we'd have to run an experiment with multiple variables. First, we need to see if Bunny could answer when someone else asked the questions, and we'd also need to see if Bunny could answer without seeing the person. Bunny might be extremely smart, but like Hans, she's most likely reading other cues. Another theory I have is that Bunny notices the happy tone in Alexis' voice when she presses buttons that are coherent. This type of conditioning can train Bunny to press certain sequences. It's also important to note that we would need an experiment to verify that Bunny wanted what she said. For example, if Bunny used the buttons saying she was hungry, but then did not eat, that would disconfirm Bunny's understanding of language. Or, what if Bunny said she needed to go outside to use the bathroom, but then didn't go? Remember, a good scientist always tries to debunk themselves to find alternative explanations for events. Finally, as a skeptic, I think it's important to point out how we attribute meanings to the meaningless. As we've discussed in other videos, our brains are constantly trying to make connections. This is why we believe in superstitions, but it's also why we think our pets are trying to communicate. As we'll see in this next clip, Alexis repeats what Bunny's buttons say, love you, no. And this is just another example of anamorphism. Oh, I love you too. But it has an affectionate meaning. Same is true for the larger meanings. I'd be willing to bet that if you monitored Bunny for an entire day, you'd see her pressing a bunch of random buttons that we would somehow then find meaning to within the gibberish. Like the infinite monkey theorem states, a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this quick video. And real quick, I was talking with my beautiful girlfriend, Tristan, earlier, and I'm like, you know what? I feel this feels like Adam ruins everything. Like listen, I am not trying to ruin anybody's fun. I just like to learn stuff and see what's really going on and being skeptical and all that. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Like listen, even with this knowledge, like I still think my cat is communicating with me and loves me and is telling me certain things. That's cool. I just think it's fun to learn about this stuff. All right. Anyways, again, all those books that I referenced, they are in the description. They are affiliate links. So when you use my links to get the books I talk about, a little bit comes back to support the channel. And they are amazing books. If you love nerding out and reading about this stuff. All right, but anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on Patreon or getting merch from the merch store or my books at therewiresold.com or just getting the books that I always link down in the description. All right, thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.