Seriously! Why aren’t dogs interested in TV? We had a dog once that barked if a doorbell went off on the TV, but wasn’t interested in the least if other dogs were shown on TV, or any other other animals for that matter.
Is it a retina persistence issue? Are their brains not able to collate the moving pixels into a recognizable picture?
I’ve seen cats react to TV pictures, but never dogs. What gives?
My lab could care less about the television, unless a show with running canines is on. If there are dogs or wolves running left to right or right to left (never head on), she’ll run up to the television and nose-bonk the screen. Other than those specific times, she doesn’t react at all to the tv.
Just my anecdotal evidence.
My parents old dogs, Charlie and Rupert, would go nuts and bark up a storm if a dog or horse showed up on TV.
Most dogs are primarily scent oriented. If they don’t smell another dog around then they figure there’s no other dog there.
I’m pretty sure animals can see the TV, and even recognize some shapes (animals, humans, etc), but the majority just don’t care about the image. Anecdotally, most young animals I’ve known (kittens and puppies) have had a brief interest in the “animals” in the TV and mirror, but without any smell, or contact whatsoever, they begin to realize that it just doesn’t affect them, there is no threat/playmate, and so they ignore it.
Given a certain realistic (to them) sound, they might react again. One of my kittens freaked out the other day as I watched a YouTube video of two cats “talking” (meowing) to each other - she went looking for them!
One of my dogs has no interest in it, the other will pay very close attention to it if dogs are on…she’s also mesmorized by Baby Einstein.
When I was a kid, we had an otherwise very bright terrier who would go apeshit barking at horses - since she’d never seen one close up, we figured she didn’t realize exactly how big they were and thought they were simply a different breed of dog. She didn’t confine this just to horses walking down the road outside our house, but also barked at horses on TV and horses on the big screen at the drive-in movie theater.
It depends entirely on the breed of dog.
FWIW - Current pooch is a Bichon Frise’ and does not even notice the TV as anything other than a piece of furniture. Dogs can be barking: horses can be running and neying: pigs can be wallowing and grunting, birds chirping, people yelling… whatever. No reaction at all. Ever.
Weird.
There was a thread about this very topic several years back. I’ll see if I can hunt it down. One poster said he walked his dog past a life size and realistic statue of a dog for a long time with the dog ignoring it as a lump or rock until one day something twigged in the dog’s brain, and it recognised the thing as a dog and responded to it.
We’re minding my sister’s dog at the minute and she reacts the same. She also reacts with barking to violence between individuals and to other animals.
Could not care less?
My dog responded only to the sounds on television, not the images. But David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks had a dog who would bark aggressively whenever it saw another dog on the TV screen.
My cat will stare very intently if there’s ever another cat on TV. Other than that, he ignores it.
My dog watched the first Harry Potter movie intently and jumped up and down and barked when it ended. I was surprised since she didn’t like the book.
My dog either doesn’t see the TV or doesn’t care. One of my cats is the same way. The other one watches TV intently with us. He particularly likes Buffy but doesn’t care for foreign films.
I asked a similar question about cats. For your information.
My Lab will bark or growl at close-ups of people on the TV. She sometimes “watches” movies with us - it’s terribly cute.
Well of course. Who doesn’t like a dog and pony show?
My cats are only interested in shows that feature cat-like and dog-like creatures. For example, in a nature documentary about the African Savannah, they take interest in the lions and hyenas but no interest in the gazelles.
They are also intrigued by various cat-like and dog-like sounds they hear coming out of the TV speakers.