4 Making Sense of Dog Senses Considering humans and dogs have been best friends for thousands of years we don't have very much in common Do you roll in poop and drink out of the toilet bowl Ew no way So why do dogs Because these behaviors make sense in a dog sense way INTRODUCTION We humans experience our environment using a combination of our main senses sight smell taste touch and hearing So do many other animals But every type of animal has a set of senses that is specially adapted to their habitat and behavior For example the ears of a tiny mouse are tuned to the high-pitched squeaks of other mice sounds too high for your ears And although you can't hear them the low-pitched rumbles of elephants can be captured by the ears of another elephant over 0.6 mi 1 km away EVERY DOG IS UNIQUE Just like us every dog is an individual with different sensory abilities For example not all dogs have exactly the same hearing Breeds with upright ears may be able to hear better than breeds with floppy ears And there is variation So how about dogs A dog's sense of smell is thousands and thousands of times more sensitive than yours Does that mean they have superpowered sight and hearing too How about touch and taste This book will explore these five senses as well as extra senses dogs might have that humans don't Dog gone it by the time you finish this book you'll be able to fully appreciate what the world feels like to our canine companions And you might even understand their love of poop rolling and toilet-water drinking between breeds for the other senses too Plus one dog might lose her sight with age while another might be born deaf So as you read keep in mind that the woof-tastic senses described in this book are generalities
MORE THAN FIVE SENSES This book focuses on the five main senses because they're the most well-known ones but people and dogs actually have more than five Scientists think there may be over 30 in total For example there's proprioception pro pree oh SEP shun which is your sense of where your body is in space It allows you to do things like touch your elbow with your eyes closed Some senses are ones you notice like knowing when you're hungry Others you don't notice like your body responding to the level of oxygen in your blood 5
There's a Wolf in the Living Room When two dogs greet each other they don't shake paws they sniff butts Why do dogs do something so gross Because take away their squeaky toys and cute sweaters and dogs are still animals after all Dogs evolved from wolves These large carnivores or meat eaters are found all over North America Europe and Asia They live in family groups known as packs A pack defends a territory and often hunts together Wolves are famous for communicating with each other by howling but they also use chemical scents like pee left on trees and rocks to mark their territory About 40,000 years ago there were no dogs but there were wolves and humans Back then humans gathered plants and hunted animals for food But the animals they ate such as deer or caribou were the same ones the wolves hunted You can bet that put people and wolves in direct competition for dinner 6 So how did we eventually become best friends fur-ever with our bitter rivals Scientists aren't positive because there are no records from that long ago But based on research using fossils and DNA there are two main possibilities The first is that humans captured wild wolf pups to have as pets raising them and keeping the tamest ones A tame animal is a wild animal who has learned to get along with people These tamer pets would have produced pups that were a bit friendlier than the wild wolves Eventually these animals would have become domesticated meaning they were born comfortable around humans After enough generations these pet wolves became the pet dogs we know today The second possibility is that wolves tamed themselves Early humans produced garbage which was a tempting food source for animals Some wolves were too afraid to take advantage of the garbage but less skittish wolves were attracted to an easy meal Over generations the braver wolves became friendly toward humans and these
wolves bred with each other until eventually they became domesticated dogs However it happened we know that all pet dogs have a predator in their past And those wolf ancestors shaped how dogs experience the world So even though today's dogs no longer need to stalk deer together in the dim light of dusk to survive they still communicate with each other using odors And since the smelliest place on another dog is their behind it's no wonder dogs love butt sniffing TINY TOYS AND COLOSSAL CANINES If they're all related why don't all dogs look like wolves or like each other It's because humans got involved As soon as dogs started living with us we began to breed them to behave in certain ways by choosing particular males and females to pair up to have puppies Then in the 1800s dog breeding really took off and people started breeding dogs for their looks Today there are over 350 different dog breeds from tiny ones such as Yorkshire terriers to giant ones such as Great Danes 7
