Dogs have been analyzed more than any other pet because of humans’ long history of companionship with them.
Have you ever wondered what your dog knows about you? Do you really know everything about your dog? Dogs have been analyzed more than any other pet because of our long history of companionship with them. Any relationship can only benefit by understanding each other more, so let’s take a look at some things about our dogs that may surprise you.
Dog Emotions
Dogs certainly have emotions but they are not quite as obvious as we may seem to think they are. For example, if your dog does something wrong do they feel guilty? No — there is no guilt. Their faces and eyes may look guilty but that is actually the look of sadness that you are mad at them. They will learn to avoid the “bad” behavior because they don’t want you mad at them but they don’t actually feel guilty. Scientists tested this and found that innocent dogs showed a more “guilty” look than dogs actually guilty of something when yelled at.
While dogs not feeling guilty may surprise you, many of the other emotions you perceive in your dog are accurate. For example, dogs really do love you. When you spend time with your dog their brain releases oxytocin — the love hormone. This is the exact same chemical released when humans are with people they love. Dogs also keep track of fairness so if you have two dogs you better give them the same number of treats!
Dog Senses
Dogs can see much better than you at night and they can detect movement very well. In every other way, your sight is more powerful than a dog’s sight. You can see further, you can focus better, and you can see far more colors than your dog. However, a dog is not colorblind. We see colors because of structures called cones in our eyes. Humans have three cones and dogs have two. Dogs can easily see blues and yellows but they do not see the colors red and green.
Dogs can hear sounds about four times further away than humans. This means that if a human can hear something 10 feet away, a dog could hear the same sound 40 feet away. Dogs can hear sounds in frequencies that humans do not hear. Scientists believe that dogs can even hear in similar ways that bats do. This increased frequency perception has created the misconception that dogs can detect storms and earthquakes before they happen. This is not true. What is really happening is the dogs are hearing the different frequencies of storms and earthquakes before our sound frequencies make it to our ears.
The most remarkable sense in a dog is the sense of smell. Your dog can detect a remarkable number of things in the same way that specially-trained dogs do. The only real difference between your dog and a specially-trained dog is the trained dog knows that they are supposed to tell you about what they detect. Your dog does not know that you want to know about it. Here are some incredible dog-sniffing examples:
- Cancer detective – Cancerous cells give off a different odor than regular cells and dogs can tell. There are quite a few cases where even untrained dogs nervously and continually nosed around a part of an owner’s body where cancer was later detected. There are now specialty-trained cancer detector dogs.
- Beehive detective – A bacteria called American Foulbrood has been devastating beehives. These bacteria can be detected and removed but it takes a human all day to test 50 hives. Dogs have now been trained to tell us about these bacterial infections and they can test 100 hives in an hour.
- Diabetes detective – When a diabetic person’s blood sugars fall, there are chemical changes that dogs can smell in our breath and skin. Dogs trained to warn us about this have been able to warn a person before fainting.
- Seizure detective – Scientists are not certain how but dogs have been able to warn humans when their human partners are about to have a seizure. The scientists suspect that a change in the blood composition or body temperature just prior to a seizure produce difference chemicals that the dogs can detect.
There are many more things that we know dogs can detect and this includes pregnancy, drugs, bombs, termites, bedbugs, causes of fire, and missing people. It’s not that we are training dogs to be remarkable sensors — they are just being dogs. They are sensing everything that they have always been able to sense. The only difference is we are now training some of them to tell us about it.
