You know that your dog is the best dog. You know that your dog is the most handsome/most beautiful. You know that your dog is smarter than some humans. Or not. Maybe your dog is one of those goofy goof balls who is all love and not a lot of brain. ((ha)) These are the important things to know about your dog. But there’s so much more so here we are with fun facts about dogs.
Keep in mind that we could fill whole books about dogs. Of course we could. Dogs are fascinating. And their evolution alone is worth some shelves in the library.
This list will be just a start. We’ll occasionally come back to this topic over the coming months.
(First Fun fact: We just updated our page about Sundance Retrievers planned litters.)
Let’s start our fun facts about dogs by looking at…
Dog’s senses
Smell
It’s been estimated that a dog’s sense of smell is 100,000 times greater than our human variety. WHAT? Can you even imagine?
Hearing
Dogs can hear things that are four times farther away than what humans can hear. Again… WHAT? (As we’ve always suspected, they are the superior beings.)
Sight
They have a wider range of view but the view from each eye does not overlap like ours does. So they can see more but it’s not as clear. And they have better night vision than we do.
Taste and Touch
Like with humans, this is really variable from one dog to the next. Though with their awesome sense of smell, they are certainly getting more flavor out of each bite.
Moving on, let’s get more random and fun.
Random fun facts about dogs
Diversity of looks
They happen to be the most diverse of all mammals. From super tiny to almost horse sized (exaggerating but not really). Their coat textures and colors (or lack thereof). Then there are differences in ears and face shape and tails!
They can sense the earth’s magnetic field.
It’s like they have their very own internal GPS. This was discovered by some Czech researchers by accident and observation.
Dogs’ whiskers are another sensory organ
They aren’t just for show. (Though they are snazzy.) Their whiskers sense their surroundings, help them to maintain balance, and even use air currents to determine how far people or animals are from them.
A dog’s nose print
Get this… it’s just as unique as our fingerprints! (Here’s an actual academic paper about it.)
Their vocabulary can be like a toddler’s
Yep, intellectually a dog is much like a two year old human. (Though why are they easier to teach tricks to?) There is a dog who has learned over 1,000 unique identifying names for toys and objects. Impressive. And that’s not really as unusual as you would think.
Dogs have a sense of time
They might be able to read clocks but they do sense the passing of time. This is why they can get into and know your routines. It’s also why they really can get lonely if you’re gone for too long.