The importance of the five senses in canine experiences, behavior and planning.
Canine experiences are shaped by the five senses: sight, smell, sound, taste and touch. Whether it’s navigational means, planning, memory, or behavior we can see the thought process is all rooted from the emotion via the senses. The word emotion stems from the Latin meaning to evoke motion; for every action there is an emotion provoking it. Doctor Gregory Berns from The Dana Foundation, presents canines’ sense of smell as one of their prime senses. He states, “In an early fMRI study, we presented dogs in the scanner with five scents: their owner, an unfamiliar person, another dog in the house, an unfamiliar dog and their own scent.” Although smell is the main way dogs are able to recognize most things, their other senses are beneficial as well. Let’s drive into the specifics behind the senses and the cognition.
Canines have the ability to understand and interpret the emotions and actions of others. They do this through visual cues such as hand gestures, body language and facial expressions. Just like Newton’s third law, for every action there is an opposing reaction, for dogs, in order to begin an action, there must be an emotion that stems from it. Canines also do this with auditory cues by listening to pitch and range – This allows dogs to take in stimuli from their senses and create an understanding for it.
The first step of planning involves satisfying the emotion provoking the mind. Whether that involves a job herding farm animals, going on their own exploration, finding new woods to run in or even hiding a piece of food that fell off the table for later. Dogs use their senses such as smell and sight to find what will satisfy their emotional needs. Dogs are able to plan in this way due to the amount of sensory stimuli available to them. Their olfactory system is known for controlling smell. The olfactory system makes up two percent of a canine’s brain, compared to humans which is a small 0.003 percent. Humans have about six million olfactory receptors in our noses while dogs have a whopping six-hundred million. Their smell is key when it comes to exploring and familiarizing themselves with a place or task.
Canines are also known to use urine markings as well as magnetic fields to determine their geographic location. A recent study by a biologist at The University of North Carolina, Catherine Lohmann, states that dogs can use magnetic fields to navigate unfamiliar terrain, usually staying along the north-south axis. Some dogs can even recognize the sound of their owner’s car, in preparation for them before they have any type of visual or smell stimuli. Using all their senses allows them to make decisions on what should happen, as well as when and how it should happen.
Here is a small experiment you can do with your dog to see how their cognition works. Drop a piece of food off the table and wait to see when your dog takes it. Now, their thought process after grabbing that food might be something like this.
1: Hide the food so it can be consumed at a later time where I am less likely to get caught.
2: Your dog may think about the best place to hide the food so it cannot be found before they get the chance to eat it. They might hide it behind furniture, in couch cushions or even in their bed.
3: How fast do I need to move to hide this so no one gets suspicious of what I am doing. Also, how fast should I eat it? Or should I eat it at a later time to risk not getting caught?
4: This is when they will think about when will be a good time to eat that food where it is hidden. Are there certain times less people are around an area they hid it? Is there one stricter owner that leaves at a particular time?
Another aspect of the senses controlling the thought process is in canine memory. Memory is stored in terms of stimuli, such as auditory or visual cues. A dog may recognize it is close to home due to familiar sights, smells and turns the car makes. In the same way a dog who is lost may be able to find his way home through urine markings in trees and visual stimuli.
While canines have the ability to understand and interpret the emotions and actions of others, most of the actions they are reciprocating are to satisfy either their own emotions, or their owners. Using the sensory stimuli around them and their memory, canines are then able to formulate and perform a well thought out plan. So, make sure you check all those nooks and crannies in the house to find their stash.
