I’m wondering if they can. My dog never really so much as looks at the television, but then he’s probably just uninterested. Can’t blame him really. Never anything good on. Unless I accidentally plug the tube into my infinite crap portal, of course.
Still, sometimes he gives me this look of curious bafflement, as if wondering what on Yesju’s blue earth would I and the other humans possibly find so interesting in that square against the wall up there.
What say ya’ll?
“For NASA, space is still a high priority.” ~J. Danforth Quayle
the image they see can’t be chased. They’re smart enough to know, after a while, that it’s 2-D, and whatever is moving doesn’t continue out the other end.
they can’t smell it. Without a smell accompanying the image, there’s a disconnect; it’s something that is as interesting as any other light source.
Occasionally, my dogs will bark whenever a doorbell sound is made on the tube.
My cats watch TV occasionally, but from what I’ve read not only do our pets have worse eyesight than us, but they rely on more than just sight. Their other senses (sight, sound) and perhaps other visual cues (shadowing?) tell them there’s nothing there.
Hmmmm, well maybe SOME dogs! My sister’s rottie is 10 years old and still trys to “catch” sheep and cows when the rodeo is on the tube. (kinda yucky cleaning rottie nose prints off the screen after a rodeo!).
My aussie watches with keen interest whenever other animals, particularly dogs, are on the screen, then loses interest when people come on,
Sure they can watch it. They are just waiting for shows that truly are “reality”. If they can eat it then they’ll be more interested. Otherwise, it is a big waste of time.
Some dogs do watch television. One of the other techs was telling me about her mastiff who is utterly entranced by the Baby Einstein videos. Her daughter can’t watch it, because no one can see the screen through Thurman’s head.
Mine, however, are only interested when there’s an animal on, and they’re far more likely to notice the soundtrack than the image. Dolly often paws the entertainment center, whining, looking for the source of the barking.
My mom’s dog must fall in the category of “not too swift” because she lunges at the TV and then frantically tries to see where the offending dog, cat etc…has gone. Makes watching the Animal Channel a bit difficult. She also takes umbrage with babies. She just doesn’t like the little creatures! lol
One of Mrs Priceguy’s two dogs watches TV. Sitting in the couch. With one paw on the arm support. He thinks he’s a human, see, and we haven’t been able to convince him otherwise.
He barks at dogs on the screen, and also at people dressed up as dogs, which is slightly more impressive.
My dog generally doesn’t take notice of the TV, but there was an ad on a few years ago which had a fly buzzing around as if it were ON the TV rather than IN the TV. My Lucy, being not the brightest of creatures, believed this and tried to catch the fly. She was none too pleased with her failure.
I think dogs definitely have a sense of abstraction in that way… She’s mistaken more than one representative thing for something real. My dad has a bust of Charlie Chaplin in a basement room in my parents’ house (sounds odd, I know, but he was a film studies professor who was an expert on Chaplin) and when Lucy saw this disembodied head up on a shelf she was very, very angry at the fact that there was a human head up there, especially one that wouldn’t pet her. She got similarly angry at a statue we have in this town of a well-known late local celebrity. As he was known to be friendly, the statue is reaching out to shake your hand. Lucy thought, from a distance, that he was reaching out to pet her. She was mighty peeved when she got there to discover he was bronze.
My friends French bulldog goes nuts anytime an animal pops up on the tube, she also gets worked up by cartoons(The Simpsons, in particular) and any high action fistfights. My Basset hound couldn’t care less about the TV
My dog lunges at the TV whenever there are animals or animated characters on the screen. She especially hates the gecko on the insurance commericals - I guess it is because it is an animated animal! It makes it very difficult to watch Animal Planet and movies like Shrek and Ice Age.
I recently bought this “Dog Sitter DVD” from PetSmart just to check out what it was. It was a poorly-produced montage of clips of animals basically walking around. The soundtrack didn’t quite match the action, but was quite loud and had alot of whistles going on and according to the box “subliminal messages of ‘good dog, good dog’”
Anyway my point is that my dog wasn’t too hip to watching it when there were sounds on it that she didn’t recognize (turkeys, ducks, chickens). But when she heard other dogs bark or birds chirp, she watched. Then, she thought those sounds were coming from outside (usually they do!) and went out to find them.
BTW I highly recommend the video…not for dogs, but bored people that enjoy staring at the tube. My brother and I were captivated by the whole 3 hours of nonsense (especially the rodeo monkey riding the sheep dog!)
My dog, a border collie mix, also likes Animal Planet and (for some reason) golf.
This is weird, though. When we moved into our house, the doorbell didn’t work. We got our dog after we moved into the house, as a six week old puppy from the animal shelter. Even though she’d never actually heard a real doorbell and seen the consequences of it ringing (people getting up to answer the door), whenever she heard the doorbell on tv, she’d bark and run to the door. She obviously picked this up somewhere, but I have no idea where.
I read in a book somewhere (sorry, I can’t remember which one, but it was probably one by Stanley Coren) that our current televisions are not high-resolution enough for dogs to be able to really see what is happening on the screen, so they can’t truly watch television. They can, of course, hear what is going on though, and can recognize that it is coming from the TV, though some don’t even get that far. My dogs alert to certain sounds, like dogs barking and doorbells, but they both think those things are happening outside and will run to the window instead.
Cats, on the other hand, have more acute vision and can see TV. I have seen evidence of this with a friend’s cats. She bought one of those videos of birds, etc. produced especially to entertain one’s cats and it most certainly works. They would jump up at the screen and try to catch the birds. Entertaining for both us and them.
I am wondering if dogs will be able to see the HDTV images when those sets become more widely available.
My dog hates that gecko too - drives her nuts. She definitely watches television. She parks herself in front of it when “Wild Kingdom” is on and tries to figure out where the antelope herd went; often looking behind the set.
My dog enjoys soem Animal Planet shows. He seems to cue on ther sound mostly. If there’s a dog barking loudly, or a cat, bird or a chimp hooting, he’ll look at the TV. If it’s an agility challenge, he’ll get pretty worked up and want to interact with the dog on TV.
That’s nothing. My dog tried to have sex with a plaster panther at a friend’s house!
My dod does a really starnge thoing…when a show with a dog comes on, he willwatch the screen with interest. I can tell he is interested,because his ears prick up , and he watches intently. Now, the real shocker" when a dog on screen barks, he will walk behind the set, LOKING for the dog! I think this shows some elementary reasonoing ability…clearly he knows a dog is barking, and he is trying to find the other dog!
