Do Dogs Watch TV? And What Do They See?
Its not uncommon for dogs to take an interest in nature shows featuring animals moving about, according to Stanley Coren, PhD, a psychology professor and author of several dog books, including “How Dogs Think” and “The Intelligence of Dogs.” On-screen animals must be real to trigger a reaction, though. Cartoon critters just dont spark the interest of our canine friends, Coren says. This is a testament to a dogs ability to accurately interpret what they see.
Do dogs watch TV? Yes, but a pups vision differs from that of a human. Christopher Pirie, a veterinary ophthalmologist at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, says that a dog with normal vision sees at 20/60 compared to our 20/20 rating. So if youre watching TV from 6 feet away, your dog would have to be within 2 feet of the screen to see what you see. The farther they are from the screen, the grainer and fuzzier the video will be. This could be why they lie in front of the TV so often.
Dog eyes also process colors differently than human eyes. For instance, we have three types of color-detecting cells inside our retinas. Dogs only have two, which means they perceive fewer colors with less saturation than the average human. Your furry friends color range includes dull blue, yellow and green tones. Although limited, this range of vision dispels the notion that pets can only see in black and white.
Veterinary Vision, a California-based pet clinic focused on eye health, says that a dogs ability to see stems from their field of view and several other factors, including their ability to:
These abilities vary among dogs based on their health, age and breed. For example, a pup with cataracts wont see clearly; their vision may deteriorate to the point where they only see differences between light and dark, not colors. When this happens, their other senses like smell and hearing will shift into high gear to help them understand whats going on around them. Therefore, if your dog has cataracts and still perks up during movie night, it may be due to their hearing rather than their vision.
Even with a specially made channel, dogs tend to watch tv for only short bursts of time, usually just glancing at the TV. But some dogs are more reactive to TV than others. Herding breeds, for example, often watch television with more intensity because of their attraction to moving objects. Veterinary behaviorist at Tufts University, Nicholas Dodman, was the lead scientist on the DOGTV project. In an interview with National Geographic, Dodman explained why some dogs react to television and others donât. âDifferent dogs, like people, have different personalities,â Dodman said. âBeyond biology, how dogs react to TVâwhether itâs running around, barking excitedly, or just ignoring itâmay come down to personality or breed.â
Nowadays, our modern televisions (and phones) have high-resolution pictures and clear audio, which offer our pups a clear view into another world. Modern HD/4K TVs are refreshed at a much higher rate, allowing dogs to view fluid motion. Sounds can also have a significant impact on a dogâs viewing of television. As most pet parents can guess, studies have found that pups were more attentive to video that includes barking, whining, and sounds of praise.
They canât take in as many colors as you can, but their world isnât just black and white.
We know dogs can see, hear, and interpret what is on the TV â but do dogs like watching TV? Thatâs another story and a question for which science still doesnât have an answer.
Next up is the flicker factor. On average, humans donât see the flickering of a television when the speed is above 55 Hertz (Hz). But for dogs who have better motion perception, theyâve been tested on rates up to 75Hz. With televisions being displayed at 60Hz, we see this as a fluid motion, but dogs would see the television as a set of rapidly flickering s.
Dog owners often notice their pets watching televisions, computer screens, and tablets. But what is going on in their pooch’s head? Indeed, by tracking their vision using similar methods used on humans, research has found that domestic dogs do prefer certain s and videos.
But while dogs have their own TV channel, and have been shown to prefer to watch other dogs through short interactions with specially colored programs, many mysteries remain. Nevertheless, technology has the potential to provide entertainment for domestic canines, improving the welfare of dogs left home alone and in kennels. Just don’t expect a doggie version of the Radio Times just yet.
How dogs watch TV is very different to the way humans do, however. Instead of sitting still, dogs will often approach the screen to get a closer look, and walk repeatedly between their owner and the television. They are essentially fidgety, interactive viewers.
What a dog does engage with, however, differs from dog to dog depending on their personality, experience, and preference. This is speculated to be influenced by what their owner watches, with dogs following their human’s gaze and other communication signals, such as gestures and head turns.
This article was originally published on The Conversation by Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, who is affiliated with the University of Central Lancashire. Read the original article here.More like this
What Do Dogs See When They Watch TV?
Our first Weird Animal Question of the Week of 2015 comes to us from our very own photo editor Mallory Benedict, whos curious about why her sisters poodle pays such rapt attention to the television.
“He totally loses it when theres any kind of animal on TV. How does he recognize animals on TV, and why does he have such a strong reaction?” Benedict asked.
Domestic dogs can perceive s on television similarly to the way we do, and they are intelligent enough to recognize onscreen s of animals as they would in real life—even animals theyve never seen before—and to recognize TV dog sounds, like barking.
A 2013 study published in the journal Animal Cognition showed that dogs could identify s of other dogs among pictures of humans and other animals, using their visual sense alone. (Also see “OCD Dogs, People Have Similar Brains; Is Your Dog OCD?”)
However, there are some differences between ourselves and mans best friend—for one, dogs eyes register s more quickly than do ours. So older television sets, which show fewer frames per second than modern televisions, would appear to a dog to be flickering like a “1920s movie,” said Nicholas Dodman, a veterinary behaviorist at Tufts University, in Massachusetts.
Dogs also have dichromatic vision, which means they see a range of two primary colors, yellow and blue. Human vision is trichromatic, so we see the full range of colors, according to Binghamton Universitys Ask a Scientist web page.
DogTV, an HDTV cable channel designed for dogs, interests canines because HDTV has a much higher number of frames per second and is specially colored to accommodate dogs dichromatic vision, said Dodman, who is the channels chief scientist. (See National Geographics best dog pictures.)
DogTV has modes for relaxation, which shows s like dogs chilling out in a grassy field; stimulation, which depicts scenes like dogs surfing in southern California; and exposure which shows things like a dog reacting to a ringing doorbell and obeying commands to acclimate them to such situations at home.
Beyond biology, how dogs react to TV—whether its running around, barking excitedly, or just ignoring it—may come down to personality or breed.
“Different dogs, like people, have different personalities,” Dodman said. “Some are territorial, some are not; some like people, some hate people; some are predatory, some arent; some are pushy, some are shy.
Hearing a barking dog on the set often gets TV-watching dogs excited. (Check out this YouTube video of a German shepherd that barks only when another dog appears on the TV, totally ignoring those boring humans.)
Some dogs not only bark at animals on the screen, but also run behind the TV looking for them.
Others “have been desensitized to television. When they see a dog [on TV], they [may] think, Those guys just hang out on the television. They never actually walk around,” Dodman said. (Take National Geographics dog quiz.)
What breed a dog is may influence its reactions to TV. Hounds, which are driven by smell, arent as interested in visuals, but herding breeds, such as terriers, may be more stimulated by moving objects they see on the small screen.
Many of us leave a radio or TV on when we leave the house to keep our dog company, hoping that the sound is more comforting to our pets than silence, Dodman said.
Channels that feature animals might be preferable to news programs, but, like many humans, dogs often just half-watch TV anyway.
“They orient to things theyre interested in, look at it for a couple of minutes and go hmm, interesting, and then look away,” said Dodman. Even so, “thats better than spinning your wheels all day while your owners are away.”
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