Thoughts on dogs' perception of the world
I had a discussion with a friend of mine a few weeks ago and we stumbled onto this interesting nugget. I'm curious what you guys thing.
As humans, our most powerful senses are sight and sound. Using sight and sound we are able to visualize the world in three dimensions: up-down, left-right, front-back. When we walk into a new space we map it out visually to get a 3d understanding of our environment. Sound we also use to help with mapping. When we hear a sound, we localize it (I can only assume doing some sort of subconscious triangulation) and add it to our mental map. So, between sound and sight, we can build fairly accurate 3d models of our environment, even for some things we can't directly observe.
For dogs, I think it's pretty commonly accepted that their most powerful sense is smell, followed by hearing, and to a much lesser degree sight. Using sight and sound the way we do, dogs can build up 3d maps of the world too. Additionally, using smell, dogs can locate objects in their environment, further contributing to their 3d map. BUT, smell has a unique characteristic. That is, scents dissipate over time. Smell communicates a fourth dimension: recency. So, if you were to put a cat on a chair and remove it 10 minutes before a dog entered the room, the dog would know a cat had been there. Would the room "appear" different to the dog if the cat was only removed one minute before they entered the room? If so, then wouldn't it be likely that dogs perceive the world in four dimensions?
Sort of a cool idea right? What do you guys think?
As humans, our most powerful senses are sight and sound. Using sight and sound we are able to visualize the world in three dimensions: up-down, left-right, front-back. When we walk into a new space we map it out visually to get a 3d understanding of our environment. Sound we also use to help with mapping. When we hear a sound, we localize it (I can only assume doing some sort of subconscious triangulation) and add it to our mental map. So, between sound and sight, we can build fairly accurate 3d models of our environment, even for some things we can't directly observe.
For dogs, I think it's pretty commonly accepted that their most powerful sense is smell, followed by hearing, and to a much lesser degree sight. Using sight and sound the way we do, dogs can build up 3d maps of the world too. Additionally, using smell, dogs can locate objects in their environment, further contributing to their 3d map. BUT, smell has a unique characteristic. That is, scents dissipate over time. Smell communicates a fourth dimension: recency. So, if you were to put a cat on a chair and remove it 10 minutes before a dog entered the room, the dog would know a cat had been there. Would the room "appear" different to the dog if the cat was only removed one minute before they entered the room? If so, then wouldn't it be likely that dogs perceive the world in four dimensions?
Sort of a cool idea right? What do you guys think?
Comments
If you were in a closed room and burned a match and then left the room with that burnt match. If I entered the room a few minutes (maybe even hours) later I would know that someone had been in there and had burned a match, and maybe I could even estimate the amount of time that had passed. This is the same with a dog, only with a dog they have further reaching ability to do so, like they might know a match was burned in that room a few days later.
To me that's no different than how Luytiy can hear Jen's car turn on to Tune drive 1.9 miles away, I can't hear it, but he can due to his more sensitive hearing.
When you first brought this up to me I was pretty excited about the idea of being able to perceive their reality via "smell-time" (like spacetime)... But the more I thought about it the more the idea fell apart. The main thing that breaks the model is that smell will eventually go away while time and space are permanent.
Certainly a Bloodhound's sense of smell give them a much more detailed view of the world than us humans - like zooming into an image and being able to see each pixel - but I think there is an assumption being made in your point above... We really do not know that dogs have the ability to extract a duration from a smell, we humans can, but we also have a deep understanding of time - I'm not sure a dog has that same type of understanding of time, and if they do, I dunno that they have the cognitive abilities to link the deterioration of a smell with duration and objectify it (into real-world time).
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In the example of dogs being excited right before their owner comes home from work (at a regular time), there is certainly the sound of the engine that they pick up on, but how would they act if the owner used another car or drove using another drive/gear? That would be one way to test if the dogs are responding to what they hear versus what they anticipate.
I used to call home before arriving from work in order to make sure that the dogs weren't in the garage or in the sideyard when I opened the garage door remotely. One of my girls had learned to anticipate my arrival with the sound of the phone ringing and would start barking excitedly. She wouldn't start barking at every phone call, but only around the time I usually called. It wasn't my voice that she overheard on the phone as she started barking when any phone call was made during that time.
Which brings me to the point @brada1878 made. I agree that dogs don't have some ability that we don't. My conjecture, at least in my head, but definitely not in my first post) is that because their sensitivities to smell are so high, they can extract information from scents easily that we can't. The fidelity, or granularity, of their observations are so much greater that they can "see" that fourth dimension without effort. It's like comparing a high powered telephoto lens with a spy satellite. You put both in space and both will take pictures, but the optics in the spy satellite will enable you to see things, and therefore mentally model, things that you couldn't with the telephoto lens. For example, with the telephoto lens, from that altitude, everything will appear flat (2d). But with the high-powered optics of a spy satellite, you can discern topography (3d).
As for dogs and their perception of time, I have to agree with ayk on that. Further, I know there are studies about delayed rewards in dogs where dogs can be taught to observe something (like a light on a door) and then return to that door up to 20 minutes later for a reward. I haven't read the papers myself, but I've discussed them with Barbara Sherman. I'm pretty sure that's solid evidence that dogs have some understanding of time.
I never suggested I think dogs don't have an understanding of time. I am certain they do, actually I think of them as living stop-watches, and I'm certain they have an ability to perceive the lapse of time.
What I did suggest was that a dog's understanding of the lapse of time doesn't give a dog the same understanding we humans have of time (as our understanding goes deeper than just the passing of time).
What I wrote was...
"We really do not know that dogs have the ability to extract a duration from a smell, we humans can, but we also have a deep understanding of time - I'm not sure a dog has that same type of understanding of time, and if they do, I dunno that they have the cognitive abilities to link the deterioration of a smell with duration and objectify it (into real-world time)."
And I stand by that, I dunno that dogs have enough understanding of time and of the deterioration of a smell, to be able to estimate the amount of time passed based on the amount a smell has deteriorated and I don't know of any studies (and I am aware of the delayed reward studies) that suggest otherwise.
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Is it too far fetched to think that some other environmental triggers could also happen around the same time that your phone call came in, and those environmental triggers were what were really triggering your dogs anticipation via association?
I'm not saying that your dogs didn't anticipate the event due to their understanding of time. I'm just saying there are other logically plausible scenarios that could yield the same result, making it appear that your female dog was anticipating the event due to the timing when really it was other environmental triggers that made it appear that way.
Just a suggestion, not an argument.
My point is that, since this thread is about a dog's perception of their environment, we should consider a dog's augmented senses (a la Dave's initial post) when considering the reasons for their behaviors... As their POF is different from ours. We may think "oh, it's x o'clock, Ann usually calls around now" while a dog may think "the neighbors garage door just opened, and I saw that cat run by the front yard, Ann usually calls after those events occur".
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Do you guys believe my analogy about optics?