[I’m sure there’s some old threads on this, but “TV” is not a searchable term…]
I’ve been petsitting a friend’s toy poodle (“Issac”) on the weekends lately, and yesterday when channel surfing I came across an old Benji movie. Well Issac saw Benji running around on the screen and barking, and went nuts, barking and jumping up and down himself. Then the Big Bad Wolf showed up, and he really went crazy.
However, none of the pets I’ve had myself (3 cats, 3 German Shepherds, a Black Lab, and 2 Shih Tzus) ever paid the TV much attention. Maybe their eyes can see no discerable image (scan rates or somesuch), or they’ve figured out that the “dog” up there doesn’t really exist.
My cat back in Montreal loved to watch Clifford the Big Red Dog. He’d sit on the sofa and stare at the screen.
My cat here is a little psycho and is more interested in attacking the moving things on the screen than anything else. I’ve seen him circle the TV, trying to get at them from behind. He’ll sometimes sit on the coffee table to watch Mythbusters with me. I think he finds Jamie’s voice soothing.
The vacuum cleaner ad with the squeaky “losing suction” vacuums brings him running from across the apartment. I think he thinks they’re mice or birds or something else he can kill and eat.
Yeah, my golden retriever will watch TV. We watch a lot of shows about animals and she definitely loves dogs on TV…and sheep. One time when she was young we watched a special about sheep dogs and now she knows exactly what sheep are and what they sound like on TV.
I think you sort of have to “raise” them to watch TV, tho. Whenever there is something of interest on tv, I tell her to look at the tv, and then she follows the images/sounds on her own. If I never pointed it out to her, she’d probably never notice.
One of our cats watches America’s Funniest Home Videos. Once it starts he sits in front of the TV and will usually watch the whole show. He also watches while we play Ms Pacman.
The other cat couldn’t care less what is on TV.
One of my ex-inlaws’s dogs watched TV, and started barking as soon as he saw a dog, a cat, a horse or any other animal he recognised. Somehow, he also figured out to bark at humans dressed like dogs, like at masquerades. Don’t ask me how his brain worked.
The other dog never paid any attention to it at all.
There used to be a daytime game show in the US back in the 1970s that featured a giant pinball machine. The contestant who successfully did a bunch of other stuff got to play the giant pinball machine toward the end of the program for various prizes. I had a cat at the time who would chase the ball on the screen as it made its way through the machine, batting at it with its paw. I was told back then that animals could not see stuff on television, but that was obviously not true.
I’ve had animals that would watch nature shows on PBS. One of the most touching experiences of my life was dur to a dog watching tv. We had two dogs, many moons ago, a German Shepherd and a beagle. The German Shepherd died just before the Westminster Dog Show. We were watching the dog show and the beagle saw the German Shepherd on the screen. She hopped off the couch, went over to the TV, sniffed at it and gave the screen a little lick. Then she went behind the TV to see where her friend was.
The kitten seems to watch TV occasionally, but we haven’t yet figured out what she seems to like; it’s pretty random. Usually she’ll be curled up with us on the couch and just end up looking at what we’re looking at.
The older cat doesn’t have much interest in the TV anymore. As a kitten she seemed to LOVE the Crocodile Hunter, and try and catch the animals on the screen, but she hasn’t done that in years. During the last Federal elections, though, she would wake up, sit up, or come from other rooms to look at the TV whenever Jack Layton was on… apparently she’s an NDP kitty! We don’t know if it was the sound of his voice, or that mustache that fascinated her so much, but it was still pretty funny to watch. Since I was entirely undecided going into that election (especially since I knew what direction my riding would go in anyways, and it wasn’t the direction I wanted), I made life easy on myself and gave my vote to the cat.
I’ll see if she has a political opinion next time around too
One of my parents’ cats (this guy) once spent an entire hour watching a documentary about cougars. We think he was taking inspiration for what he wants to be when he grows up.
Both of the cats also seem to be quite fond of ice sports (hockey and figure skating) - if attacks on a tv screen could actually have real-life effects, the NHL would be running a little short on players.
My old cat would love to watch the stock market quotes scroll by… and wander around the back of the TV to see where they went. Every morning for years.
Our (sadly departed) dwarf hamster, Coral, was very athletic (unlike her sisters and mom, who were happy to sit around eating seeds and be blobs). She was very tiny and grey and always dashing from place to place or running in her wheel. Her favorite treat was individual broccoli florets-- because she could eat them hands-free, while running on the wheel (she’d run, stop to grab another one from my hand, then munch on it while continuing to run).
Coral’s cage was in full sight of the TV, and while we were watching the 2006 Winter Olympics, I noticed that she seemed to freeze with her nose pointed in the direction of the TV a lot. She would run in her wheel, “pay attention” to the TV for a while, then runrunrunrun again, faster than before. I don’t know if it was the noise that attracted her, or what, but we joked that she was “in training” so she could be an Olympian someday…
Lenny watches shows if there are a lot of high pitched “chirpy” noises. He likes nature shows about wolves, coyotoes, foxes etc. If the show has a lot of rapid movement and “yippy” sounds, he’ll watch.
My Corgi loves to watch horse racing. She perks up when the horses are shown durning the post parade. There is usually one that will make her growl. We figure that is her choice. (She has a very good eye, and I am considering turning my online betting account over to her)
She also loves all the nature shows. She will watch any animal on the screen quite intently. She watches dog shows and every so often will growl at a specific competitor. She is consistent, and will growl every time they show that same dog.
When we first got her, she seemed to be obsessed with Bill Clinton. He was the only human on TV that she ever paid attention to. If he was giving a speech, she would look at the TV and just be mesmorized.
We recently bought a large HD TV which we placed just a foot off the ground. We couldn’t wait to see what our dog would do, having all those animals so close. She absolutely freaked out the first time she saw an animal on it. She ran around looking for the little prarie dogs she was sure were now in our house.
The funniest thing though, was actually our cat. He had never looked at the TV, so we were shocked when watching the movie Mouse Hunt, to see him slowly stalk the TV. It took about an hour, but he finally made his move. He sprang up and swatted the TV screen when the mouse was running across it. He looked so confused when he didn’t end up with the pesky mouse. Poor thing.
You just described my dog. She will kiss puppies, but bark at grown dogs, and almost everything else not human. She likes Shrek but hates Donkey, and she really gets into her shows sometimes.
This doesn’t really count as watching, but my budgie will answer bird calls he hears on the TV and on a couple of occasions he has seen the image of a hawk (in silhouette against the sky) on the screen and has returned in great panic to his cage (where he will sit, trying to look very thin and inedible)
Muffin the Burmese cat got right into watching TV for months after she encountered Stuart Little by chance - it wasn’t the mouse that grabbed her attention, it was the cats. Peace doesn’t seem interested in the TV, but occasionally when she’s on my knee she’ll track the mouse cursor or other moving objects around the computer screen.
Cindy - the Silky Terrier my parents had for 17 years - would bark at dogs on the TV. Hoover - the 13 year old Kelpie - never seemed to notice anything on the TV even before he went blind. Oh, and I once had a dog who thought the mirror in my bedroom was a window and would keep running from my room to the room on the other side of the wall trying to catch the dog he could see. That wily black dog had always disappeared by the time he got to the other room, but would be back when he checked the “window” again. How frustrating!
My cats enthusiastically watch shows on Animal Planet, or other animal-themed programs. They will sit for an hour in front of the TV, watching intently.
One of them also seems to like The Colbert Report quite a bit. I think it’s because he waves his arms around a lot.
