When Bunny, TikTok’s beloved talking Sheepadoodle, stared at herself ina mirror and asked “who this?” using her augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device’s buttons, many believed she was having an existential crisis. Since then, the Internet-famous dog has seemingly only become more interested in her own — dare we say — sense of self.

More recently on April 24, Alexis Devine, Bunny’s human parent, posted a video of Bunny pressing a button for “dog,” then a second button for “what,” a third button for “dog” and a fourth one for “is.” “Dog what dog is?” Devine narrated.

“This is happening so frequently that I’m going to add the buttons ‘animal’ ‘same’ and ‘different,’” Devine wrote in the caption which accompanied the Instagram post. 

The canine Bunny, who has 6.5 million followers on TikTok, is one of nearly 2,600 dogs and 300 cats enrolled in a project called “They Can Talk.” The study’s aim is to understand if animals can communicate with humans through AAC systems. AAC systems, such as Bunny’s giant labeled buttons that speak a single word when pressed, were originally designed to […]