Helena Sung
A dog sensory exhibit sponsored by Eukanuba gave people the chance to see, hear, smell and taste as a dog does. "I've always wondered what my dog smells," said one man, sniffing at glass beakers filled with varying intensities of spearmint scent to compare a canine's sense of smell to a human's. Dogs have 125 to 220 million olfactory receptors, says Eukanuba, while humans have a mere 5 million. Bloodhounds have an estimated 300 million olfactory receptors. It means a dog's sense of smell is 1,000 to 10,000 times stronger than a human's.
"Everything's so blue," marveled a little boy looking through special, computer-enhanced sunglasses at the dog-vision exhibit. "A video camera provides a live feed into a color corrector that manipulates colors to represent a dog's color blindness," a Eukanuba rep, Matt Fasano, explained to Paw Nation. Looking through the glasses, one could see people milling about the convention center, but everything was awash in a bluish tone, with some spots of greenish yellow. So how does a dog see -- at least during the daytime? Not as well as humans!
It's not surprising that a dog's ears are almost bionic compared to a human's. At a display, spectators put on headphones to hear what a dog hears. By clicking on various parts of a monitor displaying a typical city park scene -- tall buildings in the distance, towering trees and people sitting on the grass -- one could suddenly distinguish specific sounds from the general noise: birds singing in the trees, the sounds of car traffic, and conversations of picnickers. "Dogs can direct their hearing," explains the Eukanuba rep. "That's why they tilt their ears."
When it comes to food, whose sense of taste is keener -- dog or human? If you guessed human, you'd be right! "Dogs have only about 1,700 taste buds," states Eukanuba, "while humans have 9,000." To illustrate the point, spectators were given a tiny cup of fruit punch to drink from a jug marked "human." It tasted like normal punch. Then spectators were given fruit punch to drink from a jug marked "dogs." It tasted watery and diluted. Keep that in mind the next time you feed your dog and worry he won't like his dog food.
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As someone who owns a dog that's been totally blind for most of his life, I can attest to the incredibly bionic powers of the canine nose and ears. My basset hound went blind from glaucoma when he was young and if met us in his neighborhood it would take you a long while to guess he's blind because of his sense of smell and hearing.
One time we stopped to talk to a woman who had nbeen waving hello to us for years and she nearly fell over when I told her Franny was blind. She had never even thought he was different in any way.
I also had a basset hound who went blind with glaucoma at a young age. I had to have her eyes removed due to the pain. The first few days after losing her sight she was a bit depressed, but after that she just took it all in stride. Our other dog acted as her 'seeing eye dog' and barked at her when she was about to run in to something. Her incredible sense of smell and hearing more than compensated for her lack of vision. What a wonder these dogs are.
Being a dog lover myself, I am wondering how do these people know how a dog sees, smells, hears and tastes? Unless they are assuming this is how the dog works. Unless they get a dog to tell them, it is only a theory, just a thought...
Because they do scientific studies to test the absolute thresholds of dogs hearing, smelling and light frequency detection abilities by using a plethora of variables to narrow it down to a particular range or strength level.
when you lose it! yull hurt the moust
All this information on a dog's senses is not theory. Intelligent people do research and come up with this information.
And the funny part, Patricia, is that a "theory" is actually something that has been proven over and over and over again with countless experiments, quite the opposite as when people say "its just a theory", ah haha ! And by the way, it is also pretty scientic....did you miss the part about how they count the number of tastebuds between us and them, the olfactory (that means nasal) glands????
Did this exhibit intensify the b. o. that dogs smell from all of us?