Research in the emerging field of animal perception reveals that what we see, hear and smell isn’t necessarily the same as what our pets do. For example, humans have more color receptors than dogs, so we can see better close up and in the dark than they can; while cats can see clearly in conditions six times darker than we can.
The human nose is like an old static-filled, black-and-white TV compared to a dog’s high-definition, state-of-the-art set. If you laid out all our smell receptors (about 5 million), they would fill your average postage stamp. A dog’s receptors (about 220 million) would cover an average handkerchief. Canines are even becoming medical diagnosticians. Researchers at the Pine Street Foundation, a cancer research organization in California, have trained dogs to detect cancer on a patient’s breath. They found that the dogs detected lung cancer with 97% accuracy and breast cancer with 88% accuracy. Maybe some day, you’ll get a dog scan instead of a CAT scan!
Both cats and dogs can hear things you cannot, which is one reason most dogs make such terrific home alarm systems. Cats can hear sounds several times higher than we can, which is useful when they hunt.
All this suggests that the inexplicable behaviors we may observe in our pets shouldn’t be dismissed as simply nutty. The world they live in is different from ours—but we are growing closer and learning from each other every day.
[Read the entire article on Parade.com to compare more of your pets’ perception to yours.]
