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 demand 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 tick tock 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 ideomotor 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 wegner 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 hans 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
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for all of the books i reference 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 hans
in the early 1900s a man by the name of her
wilhelm von austen owned a horse named hans
who could apparently solve complex math equations
a horse that can solve complex math is quite the site
so von austen made quite a bit of money touring with hans and doing shows
von austin taught hans to not only add and subtract
but hans could multiply divide and work with fractions unlike bunny hans
didn't have buttons to press so he would count out the answers by
tapping his hoof if you asked hans what is 12 plus 12 he
would tap his hoof 24 times what's 10 divided by 2 hans would tap 5
times much like bunny it was incredible but
back then they didn't have tick-tock or viral
sites like mashable so hans 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 hans
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 strump in the skeptic's guide to the universe
by dr stephen novella stump's work is so popular because
during a time when people believe much more in the supernatural
he was brave enough to go against the group and try to discover the truth
stump was able to get vaughn austin to agree to letting a team
research clever hans 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 vaughn austin to ensure vaughn also wasn't somehow
giving hans the answers or saying some type of code with his
wording they had other people ask hans the questions
surprisingly hans was still able to answer correctly
score one for clever hans and vaughn austin
but then stuff started to wonder if hans was clever
but just in a different way if hans wasn't getting the answer through
language maybe it was through sight so stuff and his team hid von austen from
hans's view with a sheet and von austen would ask the questions
lo and behold hans couldn't get any of the answers
right then they duplicated hans's inaccuracies
with other people so what was going on well some people would assume that von
austen somehow figured out signals to give hans intentionally the
consensus is that vaughn 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 ideomotor
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 hans was extremely intelligent but in a different way
hans 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 these subtle movements from vaude
austin were hans's subtle signals to stop tapping which
gave the appearance of him knowing the answer so now that we
know the story of clever hans and the idiom motor 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'd 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 asks 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's 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 you'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 uh 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 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 be
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 but anyways again all those books that i
referenced they are in the description they're 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 like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new
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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