WHEN YOU CARE for any animal it’s very important to be aware of their physical abilities. It’s easy to imagine that they see the world in the same we way do. Why wouldn’t they?
Well, dogs engage with reality in many different ways to us. So, when we are responsible for them, we need to be able to understand how it works for them. It’ll help us communicate better.
Dog vision and how they see the world
Dogs cannot see objects as well as humans. Normal human vision is 20/20 while most dogs have a visual acuity of 20/75.
This means that a dog has to be 20 feet away from an object to see it as clearly as a person who is 75 feet away from it. But not all breeds of dogs are the same, for example Labrador Retrievers have better eyesight that is closer to 20/20 then some other dogs.
When it comes to colours, dogs can see more than just black and white. Research tells us that they are able to distinguish two colours, blue and yellow. They are also able to differentiate between shades of grey and they can see brown hues. However, this does mean that your dog is unable to recognise the colours green, orange and red.
Instead of sight, dogs use other cues such as smell, texture, brightness, and position rather than relying solely on colour to be able to see their environment.
However dogs do see a lot better than humans do at night. They have many adaptations for low-light vision. They also have better motion visibility than humans which means that dogs can see moving objects much better than stationary ones and they have 10-20 times greater motion sensitivity than humans.
So if you’re silently standing across the field from your dog, don’t expect them to recognise you. They’ll only spot you when you do some sort of motion that is individual to yourself or they will use their amazing sense of smell and hearing to locate you.
A dog’s sense of hearing
Dogs have much more sensitive hearing than humans. They hear sounds four times farther away than we can, some studies even suggest that they can hear as far as a kilometre away. They can easily hear higher-frequency sounds, differentiate between sounds and pinpoint the exact location of where the noise is coming from.
Sound is caused by air vibrations. The more vibrations per second, the higher the sound and the higher the frequency. Humans cannot hear sounds that vibrate at greater than 20,000 vibrations per second (20,000Hz). Dogs can hear sounds of up to 50,000 vibrations per second (50,000Hz). This is why some dogs are scared of fireworks or thunderstorms. It is also why a dog might bark at a sound you cannot hear and why they respond so well to a whistle.
The ears of dogs are controlled by up to 18 muscles while humans are equipped with only six and can only move their ears slightly, if at all. This means dogs can tilt and rotate their ears to feed the sound into the inner ear more efficiently. In addition, the shape of some dog breeds’ ears is able to amplify the sound more accurately.
Hearing ability in dogs does vary by breed and therefore allows some dogs to have slightly better hearing than others. Large dog breeds that have upright ears tend to have the best sense of hearing, whereas dogs with smaller ears, or ears that hang downward, may have less hearing sensitivity.
Interestingly in 2013, Paul McCartney said that he added a frequency only dogs can hear to the end of the Beatles song ‘A Day in the Life’, so have a listen and see if your dog pays more attention to the song than others.
A dog’s sense of smell
Researchers guess the dog’s sense of smell is somewhere between 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than ours. One of the reasons a dog has a better ability to smell is the number of scent receptors they have. For every scent receptor a human has, a dog has about 50 with the German Shepherd and Bloodhound thought to have the best sense of smell of all breeds.
Your dog’s nose has a pattern of creases and dimples that make up a nose print believed to be as individual and unique as a human’s fingerprints. Their noses are wet because it helps them absorb scent chemicals left by everyone and everything around them. Under perfect conditions, it has been reported that dogs can smell objects and people as far as 20km away on land and as deep as 30 metres underwater.
A 2022 study by Queen’s University Belfast showed that our dogs can smell stress from human sweat and breath which in turn impacts their behaviour around us. They can even smell some diseases and hormonal changes in our bodies.
One amazing fact is that dogs have the ability to continuously breathe and smell at the same time. A dog’s sense of smell is so important to them that approximately one eighth of their brain is dedicated solely to that purpose. That’s why one of the most difficult times to get your dog’s attention is when they are concentrating on smelling something interesting. Scents that are most intriguing to your dog are blueberry, blackberry, mint, rose and lavender.
So the best way to get your dog to respond to you is to dress up in your favourite yellow and blue outfit, call them using a high-pitched voice while waving your arms and eating some blueberries… on second thoughts, where’s my whistle?
Suzi Walsh is an expert dog behaviourist and dog trainer. She has an honours degree in Zoology and a Masters in Applied Animal Welfare and Behaviour from the Royal Dick School of Veterinary. She has worked as a behaviourist on both TV, radio and has also worked training dogs in the film industry.
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