How Dogs Drink Water Is Completely Different From How Humans Do
Look at your dog. Look at yourself. There’s one thing that we have but dogs really don’t have that helps with drinking water. Do you know what it is?
That’s according to Sunghwan “Sunny” Jung, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech. He did a study on how cats and dogs drink water to understand the physical mechanisms of it and found that the main reason dogs don’t drink like is us because of what he called their “incomplete cheeks.”
That’s a feature all carnivores have, your dog being among them, Jung says. “Their mouth opening is extended all the way to the side of their cheeks. That large mouth opening lets them open their mouths widely, and helps them kill prey quickly by increasing the biting force.”
So how does that relate to drinking water? It comes back to the cheeks again. “The problem is, because of their cheeks, they can’t suck in water like humans do,” Jung explains. “If they tried to suck in water, air would come in from the sides of their mouth. They can’t seal their cheeks to create a sucking motion. That’s why carnivores, including dogs, developed the lapping mechanism using their tongues.”
Of course, that poses a different question: How does lapping work?
“Instead of sucking the water, dogs move their tongues in and out of their mouths into the water,” Jung says. “They create a water column and they bite down on this column to drink it.”
So, what’s a water column? It’s literally the water that splashes up if you were to plunge your hand in and out of a bowl of water rapidly. If you try this yourself (it’s fun!), you will see the water shooting up and down in a column-like shape. That’s what your dog is biting down on when he drinks.
Figuring that out wasn’t easy. Scientists were stumped by something else dogs did when they plunged their tongues into water: They curled their tongues backward while doing it. Their tongues looked like ladles, and it made scientists wonder if dogs were scooping water into their mouths.
To find out, a group of researchers x-rayed a dog’s mouth to see how water was transported. “They found that water adheres to the front sides of their tongues, opposite of the ladle shape,” Jung says. “The water that hit the front of the tongue was what was swallowed. The water in the ladle fell back into the bowl.”
So why do dogs make this ladle shape? That’s where Jung’s study came in. “The reason why they form the ladle shape is not to scoop,” he explains. “A water column’s size is determined by how much area is in contact with water in the beginning. A dog curling [his] tongue backward means there is more area on the front of the tongue to hit the water.”
There you have it: How dogs drink water is scientific genius.
Get a Pet Fountain
You can get a pet fountain to encourage your dog to drink more water. Dogs enjoy drinking running water more than drinking from a bowl, and the water from the fountain will always be clean and cool.
Change the Water in Their Bowl Frequently
Dogs may refuse to drink old, stale water. It’s important that you clean and replenishes their drinking bowl with fresh, clean water often. Also, consider checking the water temperature to see if it’s too warm to be palatable.
Cats vs Dogs Drinking Water | Slow Motion | Experiments
You might not look at your dog slurping and gulping water into his throat (and all over your floor) as an engineering marvel. But you might want to look again.
A study out of Virginia Tech on the mechanics of dogs drinking water shows that what looks like a sloppy mess to us, is actually quite an interesting and complicated feat.
Cats and dogs both have incomplete cheeks, which is something all predatory animals have in common. This is because, as predators, they need to be able to open their mouths extra wide to kill their prey. A dog’s lips go all the way around the mouth. As a result, they are unable to purse their lips and use their cheek muscles to make a vacuum in the mouth to draw water into the mouth. Sadly, no straws for dogs!
Cats drink neatly as they place their tongues on the water and pull it up, catching the resulting stream of water with their tongue. Dogs, on the other hand, drink by hitting the water with their tongues. When they take their tongues out of the water, they create an incredible acceleration—roughly five times that of gravity—that creates water columns that then feed up into their mouths.
“Dogs curl their tongues backward, shaping like a ladle,” says lead researcher Dr. Sunghwan Jung, assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. “Then, their tongues will scoop some water and also create a column of water beneath. Dogs bite and drink a portion of this water column, but scooped water will fall back to the bath.” Hence, all the splashing.
“All breeds of dogs drink the same way, but their anatomy plays a role in how messy they are when they drink,” says Dr. Gaylord Brown, the in-house veterinarian at Delta Rescue in Glendale, Cali. “A large, heavy jowled dog will, by his anatomy, have more drool than a Chihuahua. However, the actual drinking process is the same.”
So what can a dog owner do about all that mess? Not much, as it turns out, says Dr. Brown. We need to just buy larger mats.
“Place the water bowl or pet fountain in the center of an easily cleaned and absorbent mat, especially if the dog drinks indoors—also keep those toilet lids down or you will get a cold surprise,” Dr. Brown says. Even so, don’t expect miracles. “The dog can no more control the amount of spillage than a leopard can control his spots.”
As for how much a dog should be drinking per day, a lot of that depends on his level of activity as well as the kind of food he eats, says Dr. Brown. “A dog should have about one ounce of water per pound of body weight per day,” he says. “This varies with temperature, activity and diet. Those dogs who eat canned food only will tend to drink less because the canned food is up to 70 percent water. In the heat, water consumption can triple, due to panting for temperature control. Similarly, exercise can triple or quadruple the water need, depending on the length of exercise and the temperature.”
The most important thing to remember is never to let your dog dehydrate. “Water is an important part of cooling the dog’s body,” says Dr. Brown. “Without water every major organ would soon stop functioning and the dog would die.” So everything in our dog’s amazing anatomy is designed to make sure that doesn’t happen.