Everyone Thinks Bunny, The Talking TikTok Dog, Is Having An Existential Crisis & It’s Hilarious

If you’ve ever owned a pet, you’ve definitely thought, “damn, I just wish they could speak”.

Think about it: How fun would it be to have a convo with your dog, where they could actually speak back? Better yet, wouldn’t it just be so much easier to know exactly what the hell your moody cat wants by having them tell you? Well, one pet owner on TikTok has somehow managed to get her pet to actually speak by using a custom Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) soundboard.

Yep, Alexis Devine has amassed a following of almost five-million on TikTok as people intently watch Bunny, her one-year-old sheepadoodle, communicate using human words that are split into six categories: who, doing, what, where, social, and descriptors.

The result? A talking dog that is both absolutely fascinating and very horrifying.

Using the board — equipped with more than 70 buttons that relay pre-recorded commands and phrases like “park”, “want”, “love you”, “mom”, and “hmmm?” — Bunny has mastered the art of having, what appears to be, actual conversations with her owner.

However, as Alexis has uploaded more videos to @what_about_bunny showing the dog’s progress over the passing months, people have begun to speculate that Bunny is now having an existential crisis after learning of her own powers.

You see, when Alexis and her dog went viral back in May, clips of the Old English sheepdog and poodle cross made a lot more sense. For example, in one video Bunny hits the “park” button to request that Alexis take her out to the park — something that most dogs are able to communicate by scratching at doors, picking up their leash, or even grabbing a ball.

Really, that’s how all dogs think when learning new things, associating a certain request or sound with specific rewards. When training dogs on new tricks, for example, you tell them to do something, you give them a treat when that activity is done, and they quickly learn that doing that certain thing is rewarded.

This is likely what Alexis did to train her dog on using the buttons: Bunny wants to go to the park. Bunny presses the park button. Alexis takes Bunny to the park, and Bunny learns this is what the button means.

These days, however, Alexis now asks Bunny questions that require comprehension skills, which dogs, simply, should not have.

For example, after getting some advice from “scientists running a [university] study”, Alexis begun to ask Bunny more questions that “encompass a large span of time, to get sense of her forward and backward episodic memory capabilities”.

To do this Alexis asked her pup: “When. Bunny. Went. Park. Hmmm?”, confused because the pair were now in the house, Bunny replied: “Home”. But after asking a few more times, Bunny clued in and actually pressed the “morning” button, which was correct.

when does her intelligence end? when will it stop? how can she know time? there wasn’t even a mad button and she was able to figure out how to say it by doing “no happy.” what the fuck.

— my shooters got latin roots (@costtaconcordia) October 27, 2020

In another video, Bunny hits the “poop” button to ask to be let outside. Two hours later, she then randomly hits “went” and “poop” unprompted, proving that the dog has some understanding of tense, time and her own actions. Again, absolutely terrifying.

But to show just how far Bunny’s cognitive skills have progressed, one only needs to look at Bunny’s latest videos where the dog asks her owner to go for a walk. Alexis responds, “We’re all done walk. Walk. Tomorrow. Morning. Yes,” to which Bunny pleads via buttons, “No. Why? Please”.

Bunny The Talking Dog And Her Existential Crisis

Now videos of Bunny, the once-cute “talking dog”, have become a source of terror as people feel that the sheepadoodle has become a fully sentient being. But because the internet never takes anything seriously, this fear has transformed itself into its own meme, with people wondering just how far a now-conscious Bunny’s communicative and thinking skills will go.

For example, the comment section under Alexis’ videos are now flooded with comments that imagine the different sentences Bunny could very likely come up with in her new enlightened state.

Sandwiched in between dog emojis to act as the pauses between Bunny’s real-life button pressing, comments range from the inquisitive (” where 🐶 Bunny 🐶 go 🐶 after 🐶 death 🐶 hmmmmm? 🐶”) to the damned (“why 🐶 Bunny 🐶 cursed 🐶 with 🐶 the 🐶 burden 🐶 of 🐶 self 🐶 awareness🐶 hmmmm? 🐶”) to the contemplative (“what 🐶 Bunny 🐶 purpose 🐶 hmmm? 🐶”).

But beyond these would-be sentences, people have begun to poke fun at the terrifying talking dog by imagining what Bunny’s existential crisis and imminent breakdown would look actually like.

But honestly, considering how fast Bunny is already progressing, it’ll be no time at all before she becomes strong enough to overthrow her owners and the world.

Until then, we can only imagine what a fully sentient Bunny can, and will, look like. The answer either way? Fucking horrifying.

At least when Bunny embraces her true power, we can finally get an answer to the world’s most hotly debated question: Would you kill one person to save five?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.