i don’t know if this has been posted already, if so, forgive me. but does anybody have any idea as to why dogs circle over and over and… before they lay down?
“human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” - albert einstein
Last I heard, the speculation was that the animal developed the behavior while trying to sleep in grass. Circling pushes down the grass and makes it more comfortable. (Cats do this, too, BTW).
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
Q. Why do dogs turn round three times before sitting down?
A. Because one good turn deserves another!
Bahahahahahaha!
Not.
I never got that joke because the significance of turning round three times was never addressed in the answer. Totally annoyed me.
I’m sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
Oh, and the answer to the OP is: because they can. (Or is that from another dog joke?)
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no, no… they lick their butt because they can
“human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” - albert einstein
This topic came up several months ago. The thread soon degenerated into an arguement over whether or not dogs north of the equator turned clock-wise and dogs in the southern hemisphere turned counter clock-wise.
Have you ever watched those on the equator do somersaults?
Ray (Well, isn’t that what you call circular logic?)
Actually I believe it was balls rather than butt but maybe it’s different in your neck of the woods.
RealityChuck,
That would explain crop circles then!
Although your answer is the same that I have heard. And I have witnessed my cats doing the same thing to.
Nanobyte,
Thanks for the laugh!
Konrad Lorenz wrote a lot about dogs’ and birds’ behavior, and I recommend his books to everyone who wants to understand how a dog’s mind works. It’s really amazing what complex behavior can be encoded in one’s genes. (E.g., birds are born knowing how to build a nest, which is a pretty sophisticated process.) Makes me wonder how much of our (human) behavior is determined by our genes.