All animals in the animal kingdom are special and unique in their own ways; however, everyone knows man’s best friend is ultimately the dog. With their incredibly intelligent characteristics and their humorous antics, it’s impossible to not love the furry canines. Dogs are so much more than just a companion. In fact, there are a considerable amount of things that make dogs unique within the animal kingdom.
Check out these 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Dogs.
5. Your Dog Can Smell Disease
According to PBS’s documentary, dogs that change the world, scientists actually trained dogs to detect the odor of skin melanomas and prostate cancer. In 2006, researchers at the Pine Street Foundation in Northern California reported that they had taught dogs to pinpoint patients with lung cancer, we’re talking about a 97% accuracy and breast cancer with an 88 percent accuracy just by sniffing their breath.
Researchers are training dogs to detect ovarian cancer and some service dogs are used to help diabetic patients when their body chemistry changes due to extreme glucose levels.
4. Your Dog Reads Your emotions
The human face betrays micro-expressions of emotion and your face shows these asymmetrically with different muscles engaged on different sides as a face. As a result, humans scan one another’s faces from left to right to gather information about emotional states. Dogs don’t read one another’s faces this way, but they will read a human’s face in the same manner suggesting that eye and face tracking by dogs evolves solely to read your thoughts.
3. Dogs only sleep belly up in places they feel safe
Sleeping belly-up is only typical for domesticated pets as it is a very vulnerable position. And even domesticated dogs only sleep in this position when they feel safe and comfortable. But not all dogs do this position even though they’re in a very safe and comfortable environment, it’s their own choice after all.
2. Your dog’s whiskers help him detect dangers in the dark
A dog’s whiskers pick up on subtle changes in air currents. This gives your canine information about the size, shape, and speed of the things nearby allowing them to better sense danger or preys approaching – even in the dark.
1. Your Dog Has A Toddler’s Vocabulary
A language development test reveals that the average dog can learn about 165 words similar to the capacity of a two-year-old humanoid, but what about your dog’s nuance and barks and whines? well, dog’s closest relatives, wolves, only bark as a warning, so dogs may have evolved their range of vocalizations as a way to communicate with humans. So, why would they try to pick up a second language with us Homo sapiens? scraps, my friends, lots and lots of food scraps in return for a lifetime of devotion, it is the ultimate symbiotic relationship.