Just like us, dogs have the standard five senses – sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste, and on occasion display a sixth sense which scientific evidence suggests is an electromagnetic sense that makes dog sensitive to earth tremors and vibrations. A dog’s senses, however and thus their perceptions, are tuned quite differently from their human masters.

SMELL

Smell is your dogs primary sense, and is capable of incredible feats of sniffing and discerning scents. Just as eye-sight has evolved to be a human’s most dominant sensory system, a dog’s nose has become their most important sense.

A physiological comparison make it clear how powerful their sense of smell really is. Humans and dogs both share a scent-decoding center located in the brain called an olfactory bulb. A human’s olfactory bulb weighs about 1.5 grams, on average. Though it varies by breed, a dogs olfactory bulb may be as large as 6 grams, or 4 times larger.

Considering that a dog’s brain is perhaps 1/10th as large as a humans, the proportion of the dogs brain dedicated to smells is approximately 40 times that of a human. One can readily see the emphasis that is placed on smell.

SIGHT

Vision is a human being’s most vital sense. But your dog sees its surroundings quite differently than it’s owner does.

Each component of their eyes is constructed such that the ability to see fine detail is sacrificed in favor of the ability to track movement, and see in the low-light conditions that occur at dusk and dawn.

Dogs also cannot discern depth as well as humans can. Their pupils are much larger, taking up nearly the entire eye, and cannot shrink as small as ours can. This feature lets in more light but sacrifices depth of view, or the near-to-far distance over which objects are in clear focus.

A noticeable trait is the shine that a dogs eyes gives off at night when caught in the shine of a light. This is caused by a reflecting mechanism located behind the retina, which serves as a second chance to capture light during the darkness of night. It’s estimated that dogs need only one quarter of the light humans do to see clearly (cats need only a seventh the amount).

HEARING

Along with their noses, dogs generally have a much better sense of hearing than people do. The largest difference is the upper range of frequencies our dogs are capable of hearing.

A person can hear sounds with frequencies of up to 20,000 Hz. Dogs, on the other hand, can detect sounds ranging anywhere from 47,000 to 65,000 Hz, depending on the breed of dog.

TASTE

While dogs will have a definite idea of what they do or do not like, they are generally thought not to be too picky about what they eat. The sense of taste is defined by the taste buds on our tongue and while humans typically have around 9000 individual taste buds, dogs have substantially fewer with about 1700, while cats have even less at roughly 500. A dog’s sense of taste is therefore much less than that of a human, and will eat many things unpalatable to us.

TOUCH

Different areas of a dog have different degrees of sensitivity to touch. It makes sense that the nose and muzzle are rich in sensory nerves. The pads of their paws also convey a lot of information pertaining to touch, such as levelness and firmness of the ground on which they are traversing. Indicative of this sensitivity, dogs will often not like their paws being touched too much.

The whiskers are a primary touch-sensitive spot, and are stiff and embedded deeply in the dog’s skin. The whisker acts as a lever and can amplify the most subtle of touches. In fact, 40% of the brain area devoted to touch is dedicated to the face and upper jaw, indicating its importance.

We can see, therefore that dogs and their human owners perceive the world around them in their own unique ways. Humans primarily rely on their vision, while canines are mostly dependent on their sense of smell. Still, humans and dogs share all five senses to one degree or another. We just don’t lick and sniff ourselves quite as much.

Rebecca Prince is author of “Canine-911! – How To Save Your Dog’s Life” which gives First Aid and Healthcare for your dog and is essential reading for all dog lovers