So ‘the world of your dog

The human species lasts thousands and thousands of years that live closely with the dogs, and countless specific people have spent their entire lives in the company of dogs, but there are still characteristics of their behavior that seem to be mysterious and surprising. Sometimes we are surprised at the things they do – both those of us, in their daily dogs, such as others, those excellent copies that detect cancer or guide the blind – and we would like to get in mind for a while to better understand how they perceive and understand the environment, in which their world is like ours and in which it acquires a different consistency.

«There is a very interesting word, Umwelt, a concept of the beginning of the last century that refers to every animal species lives in its own sensory world. The Umwelt of the dogs is radically different from ours and, if we don’t understand it, we will be impossible for us to understand their behavior, ”summarizes Tomàskampen, a specialist in ethology (that is, the study of animal behavior) and director of the Etovet Mallorcan Center. To what extent a radical problem is not just a weighing of the patentitatical, but the trouble of the patentitatale, but the twantitative. ‘ of the world.

“Just like people, we make a visual card in our brains of what we see, they do it with scents and much more,” says José Antonio Ramos, dog training and manager of the specialized website I Amunperro. The first to impress us with dog scent is apparently his ability to capture details that we escaped: «The number of receptors in his smile mucosa is much higher than ours and the brain zone is much wider – it develops camps. For example, they are more discriminatory: if a person smells like sweat and applies a lot of deodorant, another person smells the high concentration of that product and will be saturated, without sweat, but satiating with deodorant is a dog impossible and will smell both. That is why it is so difficult, for example, to mask the smell of a narcotic substance ». De truffel van de hond is een geavanceerd ontwerp dat, in combinatie met zijn hersenen, in staat is tot prestaties die ondenkbaar lijken voor ons: de specimens die zijn getraind om explosieven te detecteren, kunnen een piek waarnemen (dat wil zeggen de miljardste van een gram) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van TNT) van Tnt. Every day we can think about a miracle that we sometimes do not know: when a dog starts to follow the trail of a person, a few seconds are sufficient (the equivalent of five consecutive tracks) to know which of the two senses have been moved. “They compare the difference in the concentration of the scent that person may have left in a few steps days ago,” summarizes Kampen together.

Dogs also belong to the species that have a Vomeronasal or Jacobson organ (we also have it, but balance), a structure in direct contact with the brain that complements the ‘conventional’ scent. «It serves to smell the pheromones that transferring information to individuals of the same kind: not only of sexual type, that is what is usually spoken about, but let them know if another dog has been in one place and had a bad time there. We don’t say it or imagine it. If it seems that they suck a pee, they collect information through this organ, “says Camps.

The urinated rose

That introduces us entirely into the qualitative dimension, in how the smell of a dog comes to integrate the past (which has passed here), the future (which will soon appear through the door) and abstract concepts such as mood. The researcher Alexandra Horowitz, author of various Supervent books about dog behavior, summarizes it in this impressive section: «The dog knows the time it will do, how it smells of the first hour of the afternoon and if you are sick or dissatisfied. Every inhalation is full of information. It carries the scents of people who have recently passed, leaving a wake of olfactory footprints. Collect the pollen and plants notes that the wind entails. Every inspiration catches the traces of animals that have run, are run, are scared, eaten or died nearby. It catches the electrical charge and moist molecules of distant storms, ‘crumbles, in addition to explaining how a beautiful pink is in principle not relevant to a dog’ unless it is analyzed by another dog, stepped on another animal or manipulated by the owner of the dog: he is getting a lively rose interest to us.

And what about dog views? «It is radically different from ours. They are much more sensitive to light, but because of the distribution of cones and walking sticks they see the color worse. We have more visual sharpness but less sensitivity: we see better, but we need light for it. People are Trichromic (the red, green and blue classic), but they appreciate two colors, do not see red. It is not true that they see in black and white, “corrects the popular mistake. And José Antonio Ramos adds two other differences:” His field of vision is much superior to that of a person and, moreover, they have many more reflections, so that they can better detect every movement than we do. Can they show that they already knew each other, even if they had never found because they sniffed the urine of the other), there is also a fundamental exchange of information through the postures: «The position of the ears and the tail, if it looks.

And Tomàs camps adds a relevant detail there: «There are races that cannot be expressed because of our grill. For example a French bulldog. Eventually everything depends on the ears that have been lifted or fall, on the tail, of the legs that are stretched or not, and poor bulldog cannot do that. Socially it is a problem for them, because many conflicts are avoided by communication. And then there is the Gracieta of the people who cut their ears or tail to their dog by aesthetics, something that was fortunately forbidden in Spain ». That free abuse of our thousands of years shows that there is no one who just understood us.

“For them we are much more than a cluster of scents”

And what about us? When we return when we return home, our dogs extract a lot of information about the places we have been (and with which dogs we have related), what we have eaten and our physiological functions and mood. We may be nothing else for them than this complex branch of aromas, right? Tomàs camps denies it sharply: «We have evolved together. Contrary to what was thought, it is believed today that the first step to domesticate the dog did not give it, but the wolf, who approached people. Together we have been 25,000 or 30,000 years and they, without having to teach them, are already able to attend our social signals: they know what we want to tell them without teaching it, something that chimpanzees don’t do, so close to us. What goes, for them we are not only a cluster of scents and attitudes, but much more: they expressly express our social behavior that is expressed between them ». That intimacy shared in countless generations has also had his negative counterpart for dogs: “They have lost the capacities because of all this,” says the director of Etovets. Dogs were led by humans and that has their ability to orientate and resolve spatial problems, which is much worse than that of wolves ».