Does it ever seem your dog has a sixth sense? Have you noticed that it seems like a dog knows when someone is coming home? Or when it's food time?
A new study from Northwestern University has found that animals can judge time.
Dogs actually measure their days through scent. As hot air rises, it will usually rise along the walls to the ceiling and then go to the center of the room, then drop. This is how dogs are able to smell time. The intensity of a smell, and how it diminishes over time until a person comes home or a scent is re-introduced, can tell a dog that time has passed.
The canine nose has hundreds of millions more receptor cells than a human nose.
Dogs can smell time because odors change throughout the day, and sometimes predictably.
Their noses detect a fading or increasing odor.
"Odors exist in time, and dogs perceive that," Alexandra Horowitz of Columbia University claims. In fact, she wrote a New York Times Bestseller "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know" (2010).
A dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar dissolved into a million gallons of water!
A dog can detect an hour difference (for example the difference between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.), which means your dog may know by 5:00 when you'll be home at 6:00.
This should ease the stress of your job, workdays and our busy lives! Fluffers theoretically knows when you'll be home!
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