FUN FACTS

SMELL

A dog's sense of smell is its most powerful sense.  It's so sensitive that dogs can detect the equivalent of a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.  Their sense of smell is 100,000 times more sensitive than humans.  Dogs actually have an estimated 125 million sensory glands in their nose, compared to a human's 5-to-10 million.  By simply smelling, a dog can determine if another dog is male or female, happy or aggressive, and healthy or ill. 

SOUND

A dog's hearing is known to be 4 times stronger than that of a human being.  They can detect and localize sound with more accuracy and discrimination than humans.  Dogs can hear in the ultrasound range, approximately 2 octaves higher than humans can hear.  Thus, dogs can be distressed by everyday noises, like a vacuum or power drill, because they sound louder to dogs than to humans.  And dogs can hear high-pitched noises from these devices that we can’t detect.

SIGHT

When it comes to sharpness of vision, dogs don't fare as well as humans.  The visual acuity that a dog sees at 20 feet is similar to what a human would see at 75 feet.  Yet, the field of view of the canine eye is typically 240 degrees where humans are 180 degrees.  In low or dim light, dogs can see about 7 times better.  Canine eyes are much more sensitive to movement and light than humans. 

TASTE  

Humans have roughly 9,000 taste buds while dogs have only around 1,700.  This means their sense of taste is about one-sixth as powerful as ours.  Studies have shown that dogs have the same 4 taste classifications that humans do; meaning they can identify sweet, sour, salty and bitter.  However, dogs also have special taste buds geared specifically for water that are found at the tip of the tongue. 

TOUCH

A dog’s entire body is covered in touch-sensitive nerve endings that “feel” the world around him, the wind blowing or a fly landing on his back, for example.  And, dogs have touch-sensitive hairs called vibrissae, better known as whiskers, on their muzzle and above their eyes.  The most sensitive part of the canine body is the muzzle. 

INTELLIGENCE

 Dogs want a job to do!  They can understand up to 300 spoken words or gestures.  Dogs can count up to four or five. They can also do basic arithmetic.  For example, they know that  1 + 1 = 2, but doesn't equal 1 or 3.  Dogs have the level of cognition of a three to five year old child. They use a larger portion of their brain for analyzing smells.