To my knowledge dogs do not migrate for season changes. They usually only leave areas which they have marked as their territory to seek out food or water when either become scarce. They can, and apparently do, use scent primarily for that.
Humans increased visual acuity has aided them in countless ways,types the man on a laptop which required human visual acuity to create. Dogs, and their ancestor wolves, on the other hand, have managed to exist for millions of years and yet have never achieved the same level of visual acuity as humans.
If they needed to, then dogs with higher levels of visual acuity would have gained an evolutionary advantage over those which do not. Also, humans would have bred dogs to have better eyesight if they saw an advantage in that sense over say, hearing or smell.
No, they don’t migrate, and I didn’t say or imply that they did. Wolves (and dogs are descended from wolves) may disperse over hundreds of miles from where they were born, and in any case can range over large areas where scent might not be particularly useful, and it’s not out of the question that they could use stars to orient themselves over such large distances.
It may seem counter-intuitive or even surprising, but the answer here maybe that we don’t know. If small insects can use the stars to the advantage, I would guess an evolved mammal also can.
Here’s a cite " Dung beetles follow the milky way: Insects found to use stars for orientation"
Seals can navigate using stars as cues. Seals and dogs are members of the same order (Carnivora). Seals probably have even lower visual acuity than dogs, so it’s likely dogs at least have the potential to see and use stars as cues.
If you hit them on the head hard enough? Sure!
Relax I’m joking!
Uh…we introduced them to North and South America too, didn’t we?
Yes, as well as most of Africa. In fact, dogs are “introduced” by humans in most of their range. The evolution of dogs in general has been driven far more by artificial selection by humans than by natural selection. If we’re going to discuss the evolutionary influences by natural selection on canid vision, it’s better to look at ancestral wolves than dogs themselves.
We introduced dogs, but their nearest wild relatives the wolves also spread to those places on their own. And in fact, the wolves appear to have been descended from coyotes, which originated in North America.
Gray wolves Canis lupus, the ancestor of dogs, never spread to South America or to most of Africa. Wolves colonized South America for a time (apparently including the Dire Wolf Canis dirus) but died out there.
This should be easily testable. Get the use of a planetarium, set the light levels, etc. to simulate the actual stars as we see them in nature, bring in a dog with the lights off, then turn on the stars and give the dog a treat. Repeat this over time and eventually the dog will salivate when you turn on the stars.
ETA: Different breeds (not to mention individual dogs) may provide widely different results.
So, basically, replicate this test with dogs. See if they orientate via stars.
I rememebr watching one of those shows on Discovery, or NG, History going over tales of dogs. A trucker in Australia lost his dog hundreds of miles away and the dog made it back home. I think this has to be stars as general compass points won’t take you back to a house (unless you had a map and a magnetic compass). Stars, on the other hands, can get you real close and at which point you are famaliar with the immediate area.
Stars will only get you real close if you’ve got an astrolabe, a high-quality timepiece, and some mathematical know-how to use them. Much more likely is that the dog followed the road (or some other one-dimensional terrain feature like a river) until he reached a familiar-smelling region.
Given the subject matter, this is a very Sirius question.
My friend brought her Pomeranian into a planetarium once. We were planning for a show which involved moving the stars around in daily motion repeatedly. When we turned the lights back, on we found that the dog had vomited, possibly due to dizziness from watching the stars move around.
But Uranus isn’t a star. The light you see from it is reflected sunshine. So you might say that…
Ah, nevermind.
I was walking my dog early one morning on one of the rare days where the Northern Lights were visible in Colorado. He definitely saw that. He howled at them.
It’s mooning us?
Ok