The scientific basis behind your dog's behavior
Canine science is booming, with more and more researchers devoting their time and resources to understanding how our beloved pets have evolved to become so bonded with us. Thanks to disciplines such as canine biology and psychology, we now know more than ever about puppies and their behavior. Curious to find answers to science's claims about your dog? Read onto discover some of the most fascinating discoveries.
Why do dogs sleep so much?
The amount of time a dog spends sleeping depends on several factors, including its age, breed, health status, and activity level. However, all dogs need much more sleep than humans due to the short time they spend in REM sleep. While in humans this phase (the deepest and most restorative) is equivalent to approximately 25 percent of rest, dogs only remain in REM phase for 10 percent of their sleep. Therefore, they need to sleep longer to compensate for the imbalance.
What do dogs communicate when they bark?
Although dogs bark for a variety of reasons, biologists believed that their barks did not change depending on the message. However, recent research into canine biology reveals that dogs have elasticity in their vocal cords, giving them the ability to slightly alter the sound of their barks to convey different meanings, explains Scientific American.
Spectrographic images of barks show differences in cadence, pitch, and amplitude that vary with context. The same goes for growling. Although researchers are still unclear on what the different barks and growls mean, experiments have shown that dogs react differently to messages from other dogs depending on the context. For example, scientists recorded a dog growling at his food and growling at a stranger. Playing the first growl while another dog was being offered a treat, the other dog was more hesitant to accept it than when he heard the growl at a stranger. Other experiments have shown that dogs and people tend to react more to barking at a stranger than to other types of barking. More research is needed to decipher the various barks and growls of dogs, but it's becoming clear that they're a complex piece of communication: dogs don't just bark for fun.
How fast can dogs run?
The speed varies from dog to dog. Running speed is highly dependent on size, body shape, and leg length, as well as age, health, and fitness. The greyhound, the fastest dog in the world, reaches an average of 72 kilometers per hour, and the fastest member of this breed has reached 80 kilometers per hour, explains Wag!. Although speedy greyhounds and other fast breeds such as sighthounds and Afghan hounds seem to have been designed to runfast, all dogs have the ability to make their bodies move faster when they run, either by flattening their ears to decrease wind resistance or by pulling them back to avoid tripping.
The way dogs move their legs also changes when they run. A walking dog moves his right and left legs together, while a running dog jumps with his front and back legs together, allowing him to gain speed.
How high can dogs jump?
Some dogs can climb onto the couch with ease, others need stairs to snuggle up with you on your favorite couch, and still others can escape from a fenced-in yard due to their great jumping ability. Like the ability to run, a dog's ability to jump is highly dependent on its size, strength, age, health, and body condition. It has been discovered that the highest jumping dogs can reach 2 meters in height, but what is surprising is that the jumps of small breeds are equivalent to several times their height. It's also interesting how far they can jump. In dock jumping competitions, dogs are trained to run and jump as far as possible into the water. Some reach approx. 9 meters, indicates The Labrador Site.
How do dogs see?
A dog's eyes are amazing, and they can see things that humans can't. However, a dog's vision is not necessarily better than ours. According to Veterinary Vision, dogs' eyes are positioned on the sides of their heads, which ensures greater peripheral vision. However, their visual acuity (theirability to focus on objects) is only 20-40 percent of that of a human. This means that while a dog can distinguish an object at 6 meters, a human with good visual acuity can distinguish it at 27 meters. For this reason, dogs rely heavily on their other senses to help them explore the world.
Is a dog's hearing really acute?
It is not a myth: the hearing of dogs is a prodigy of biology that has accompanied them for thousands of years. According to Petful, a dog can hear a sound up to four times further away than humans. Dogs can use their ears independently and change the direction in which they listen, allowing them to focus on each sound they hear. This is because they have 18 muscles in their ears (three times more than humans). They have the ability to capture different frequencies. This is the reason why dog whistles affect them so much even though we don't even notice it. Dogs can also practice selective listening, just like humans. If you call your dog from the yard and he seems to ignore you, he probably is.
Why do dogs get so excited when they see us?
When you come home after a long day, or even after an hour or two, chances are your dog is excited and very happy. On every occasion! The enthusiasm of the dogs to meet us is one of the things we like most about them. But why are they so excited?
According to io9, there are three key factors. By studying brain scans of dogs exposed to certain odors, canine behavior researchers found that the odor of a familiar human activated the brain's reward centers in a way that no other odor did, suggesting not only that dogs They don't know the difference between humans and other dogs, but they really love spending time with us.
To measure the response of dogs to being reunited with their owners, a cognitive experiment was taken as a reference in which several children were reunited with their mother, and it was found that the reaction was very similar. It is important to remember that dogs are social animals that do not like to be left alone. Our return frees them from the feeling of loneliness. Taking this into account, it is not surprising that they cannot contain their excitement when they see the people they love.
Why are there so many dog breeds?
Dogs are one of the most diverse species on the planet. In the United Kingdom, The Kennel Club recognizes an incredible 218 dog breeds, not counting regional variations, crossbreeds, mixed breeds and those puppies that escape any classification.
Scientists believe that dogs, with their diversity in color, shape, size and temperament, began to diverge genetically from wolves around 27,000 years ago. We owe it all to ancient dominant hunter-gatherer genes and the manipulation of their expression in later generations.
Although this practice has been carried out since dogs began to be domesticated, selective breeding exploded during the 19th century, when different breeds began to be created for aesthetic and innovative reasons, and not because certain traits were more useful for breeding. hunting or grazing. Due to the maintenance of the practice, the number of dog breeds and the diversity between species continues to increase.
There is no doubt that dogs are special, just like the bond we share with them. As canine science develops, we continue to discover more and more about our favorite companions. But there's one thing we don't need science to tell us, and that's just how amazing our dogs are, each and every one of them.
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