THE DOG SENSES

The dog has five senses and they are more or less developed.The senses are: smell, hearing, sight, touch and taste
The sense of smell is the most important sense for the dog.

We humans are not even close to its capacity. The dog has about 200 million scent receptors compared to 5 million for us.
Olfactory signals are sent directly to the limbic system of the brain where the center of the emotions are, which in turn triggers emotions and memories.


The dog, often prefer walking with its nose in the ground – and when they are looking to find partners and to identify other individuals it’s the best way. You could say that they are reading of their surroundings.

Even the hearings in dogs are very good and a normal dog has a hearing which is four times better than us humans. The dog has the ability to hear high frequency sounds that we humans cannot. It is an ability they needed when they were wild because they lived a lot of rodents and therefore was able to locate them more easily.
The dogs that have erected ears can target both ears to the sound source without the need to move the head and in this way they can hear very soft sounds. The good hearing can be used to detect such as enemies or locate prey above and below ground.

Since the dog lives as social beings in groups, the tactile feeling, touching is an important part of their communication and signals. Touching various parts of the body have their own importance and are developed from birth and when interacting with litterbrothers and sisters. However, the dog is somewhat less sensitive to pain than humans but it is mainly due to the fact that we humans often react because we think it will hurt - and already has "stimulated" signals for “pain coming”.

As for the sight, however, the dog has difficulty to see and get a sharp focus on the things that are stagnant - compared to us humans. Things, animals and people that are in motion, they have very easy to see "even if in a bit of a blur" and then also at a very long distances. The dog also has a very wide angle on the vision and when you experience that the dog momently perceive what is happening behind them - they do.

The different breeds ability to see well vary in their characteristics. Greyhounds have extremely good eyesight as they hunt and are dependent in it. The sheepdog has been breed with this in mind - since they must have good eyesight to be able to understand handsignals from the owner on a kilometer distends.

The sense of taste is not as well developed in the dogs senses - we know as much as it distinguishes between different flavors, but otherwise this sense is really of secondary importance to the dogs survival.

Sure, they get used to certain foods and enjoy it. And yes, there are dogs who are connoisseurs and rejects some dishes. But it's actually not the dog's fault, more our for giving in to it …..