Purina Invests $200,000 in Interspecies Communication Research Partnership with University of California San Diego to Help Give Dogs a Voice
Tail wags, head tilts and puppy eyes – our pets say so much without using any words. And now, Purina is investing in groundbreaking research with the University of California San Diego to understand if pets can leverage Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices or audio buttons, to better communicate with humans.
The partnership includes a $200,000 grant to the university’s Comparative Cognition Lab, one of the world’s leading labs for research studies on pet communication, to support research on the use of soundboard-based audio buttons to gain a deeper understanding of pets’ cognitive abilities and help Purina understand the feasibility of future citizen science studies using the technology. The soundboards used for the research are equipped with buttons, which, when pressed, play a recording of a word, such as “outside,” “play,” “walk,” or “potty.” Through the research, UC San Diego’s Comparative Cognition Lab and Purina aim to better understand to what degree pets can use the buttons to put words together to communicate their wants, needs and thoughts.
“What excites me most about this research partnership is the opportunity to give pets an actual voice in our research for the first time,” said Dr. Annie Valuska, principal scientist on Purina’s pet behavior team. “Working with the UC San Diego Comparative Cognition Lab and thousands of at-home pet button users will allow us to explore new ways to better understand the needs and wants of our canine consumers.”
In a recently published paper, the Comparative Cognition Lab showed that dogs trained to use AIC devices pay attention to and respond in contextually appropriate ways to play-related and outside-related words. In an earlier review study, the lab has shown that some animals can be trained to use AIC devices to make simple requests of their caretakers. New research from the Comparative Cognition Lab will build on those studies, looking into how and to what degree owner-trained family dogs can use these devices to intentionally communicate their needs and wants.
“This research can help us better understand our pets and what they want and need, which has the potential to improve their health and wellbeing in a variety of ways,” said Dr. Federico Rossano, founder and director of the UC San Diego Comparative Cognition Lab. “Remotely conducted citizen science studies could be a critical tool for studying the large and geographically widespread population of pets and pet owners.”
This is not the first investment Purina has made in the area of pet communication. Through the company’s Pet Care Innovation Prize Program, Purina selected the AIC-focused startup FluentPet as the 2022 grand prize winner. As the winner, FluentPet, a San Diego-based startup that uses cognitive science and academic research to make teaching, learning and communicating easier for pets and their people, received a $10,000 grant from Purina and participated in a bootcamp accelerator experience at Purina’s headquarters with Purina executives, business experts, industry leaders, pet experts and veterinarians to broaden their network, strengthen their business plan and access knowledge from across the pet care landscape.
Learn more about Purina’s research and academic partnerships here.